Sapienza University of Rome

Its scale is also its character: Sapienza runs multiple campuses across Rome, with the historic Città Universitaria as its main site, and its size means depth in almost any specialisation a student is looking for, alongside a large and long-established international exchange programme.

Being based in the Italian capital gives Sapienza students unusually direct access to national institutions, research bodies, and cultural infrastructure that a smaller city simply doesn't have — useful well beyond the classroom, for students in fields from law and political science to archaeology and the arts.

Its size cuts both ways for an incoming student: a huge range of specialisations and a genuinely large peer group in almost any field, but also a bigger, more bureaucratic institution to navigate than a smaller university — knowing which office handles what, and getting your Universitaly pre-enrolment and Declaration of Value lined up correctly before term starts, matters more here than at a smaller school where things tend to sort themselves out informally.

Our on-the-ground support in Rome is genuinely less deep than in Turin or Milan today — see the Rome city guide for an honest read on what that means in practice, alongside the full guided application process, which works the same everywhere.