Italy vs Peru

Peru is 4.3 times larger than Italy — 1,285,216 against 301,340 km². Italy is 1.7 times more populous than Peru — 58,915,656 against 34,576,665 people.

Side by side

Population density

Italy is 7.3 times more densely populated than Peru — 196 against 27 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 Euro and the Peruvian sol.
• Different continents — Europe and South America.

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.

Peru

Peru holds the source of the Amazon and about sixty percent of its territory is Amazon basin, but most people live on the dry Pacific coast. Cotahuasi and Colca are among the deepest canyons in the world, both over 3,000 m. The Nazca lines, drawn on the coastal desert between about 500 BC and AD 500, cover some 450 km² and are only legible from the air or the surrounding hills.

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.