Cuba vs Italy

Italy is 2.7 times larger than Cuba — 301,340 against 110,860 km². Italy is 5.4 times more populous than Cuba — 58,915,656 against 10,937,203 people.

Side by side

Population density

Italy is 2.0 times more densely populated than Cuba — 196 against 99 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 Cuban peso and the Euro.
• Different continents — North America and Europe.

Cuba

The largest island in the Caribbean, roughly 1,250 km long but as little as 31 km wide. The Viñales valley in the west is a karst landscape of mogotes — steep limestone humps left standing when the rock around them dissolved. The bee hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world at about 5 cm, lives only 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.