Croatia vs Italy

Italy is 5.3 times larger than Croatia — 301,340 against 56,594 km². Italy is 15 times more populous than Croatia — 58,915,656 against 3,876,200 people.

Side by side

Population density

Italy is 2.9 times more densely populated than Croatia — 196 against 68 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.

Croatia

The Adriatic coast is about 1,780 km long as the crow flies but roughly 6,000 km including the 1,200-odd islands, islets and reefs, of which about fifty are inhabited. Plitvice is sixteen terraced lakes linked by waterfalls, dammed by travertine that the water itself deposits and which is still growing about a centimetre a year.

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.