La Sapienza ranked among top 150 universities in the world.

Rome's Università La Sapienza is the top university in Italy according to the 2023 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) of Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, a prestigious independent research organisation on higher education.

La Sapienza is the only Italian university to be ranked in the 101-150 range, making it one of the top 150 universities in the world in the ARWU rankings.

The universities of Milan, Padua and Pisa come after La Sapienza in the 151-200 rankings, while the Politecnico di Milano, University of Bologna and the Federico II of Naples are ranked in the 201-300 category.

"The result confirms the prestige of La Sapienza at an international level" - rector Antonella Polimeni said in a statement on Tuesday - "Our university is among the top 150 in the world, expressing excellence in all fields, combining an interdisciplinary training capacity with a quality of research and innovation that is unique on the global scene".

Launched in 2003, ARWU ranks 2,500 universities - out of a global total of around 18,000 - publishing the top 1,000.

World universities are ranked using criteria such as the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of highly-cited researchers, and per capita academic performance.

The world's top three universities in 2019 according to ARWU are Harvard, Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Earlier this year La Sapienza was rated the top university in the world for Classical Studies and Ancient History, for the third year in a row, in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings.