Chile vs Italy

Chile is 2.5 times larger than Italy — 756,102 against 301,340 km². Italy is 3.0 times more populous than Chile — 58,915,656 against 19,859,921 people.

Side by side

Population density

Italy is 7.4 times more densely populated than Chile — 196 against 26 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• Different currencies: the Chilean peso and the Euro.
• Chile spans 3 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — South America and Europe.

Chile

About 4,300 km from north to south and averaging only around 177 km wide — one of the most elongated countries on Earth. The Atacama in the north is the driest non-polar desert in the world, and some weather stations there have never recorded rain. That dryness and altitude is why most of the world's large optical telescopes are built here.

Italy

Italy has three of Europe's most active volcanoes — Etna, Stromboli and Vesuvius — and Stromboli has been erupting more or less continuously for at least 2,000 years. It has more UNESCO World Heritage sites than any other country. The Alps and Apennines mean about three-quarters of the land is mountain or hill.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.