The Bank of Italy holds more than 43% of its gold reserves in the United States. After the Dutch decision to scale back New York, the question of security and diversification resurfaces
The Dutch central bank has decided to sharply reduce the share of its gold reserves held in New York, moving part of the gold previously kept in North America to London. Between March and August, De Nederlandsche Bank reallocated roughly 86 tonnes: the share held in New York fell from 31.3% to 18.5% of the total, while London’s share rose from 18.1% to 32.1%. The bank cited growing geopolitical instability, a better distribution of risk, and the need to be able to mobilise reserves more quickly in a crisis as the reasons behind the move.
That’s the Dutch decision, but where does Italy stand? The Bank of Italy holds 1,061.5 tonnes of gold in the United States, equal to 43.29% of the country’s entire reserve, just under the 1,100 tonnes kept in Italy itself and far more than the 149.3 tonnes stored in Switzerland or the 141.2 tonnes in the United Kingdom. All told, that adds up to 2,452 tonnes. Based on officially declared reserves, Italy holds the world’s third-largest national gold reserve, after the United States and Germany, though that ranking should be read with some caution: China declared 2,366 tonnes at the end of July, but undisclosed public-sector purchases remain a significant factor in the market, and some analysts believe China’s actual holdings may exceed the official figure.
Never before has that gold carried such economic weight. At the end of 2025, the Bank of Italy’s gold was worth €289.2 billion, up from €197.9 billion twelve months earlier. Since then the price has kept climbing. At the morning quotes of September 3rd 2026, with spot gold at $4,422 an ounce, the 1,061.5 tonnes held in the United States alone are worth around $151 billion, just over €130 billion at today’s exchange rate.
Beneath Manhattan, in the Fed’s vault
The largest share of Italy’s gold held abroad sits with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in the heart of Manhattan. The vault rests on the island’s bedrock, 24 metres below street level. At the end of 2024 it held roughly 507,000 bars, totalling 6,331 tonnes, belonging to governments, central banks and international institutions. Fort Knox in Kentucky, by contrast, mainly holds the US Treasury’s own gold.
In New York, the Fed acts purely as custodian: the metal doesn’t become American simply by being stored in the United States. Every bar is weighed and identified for purity and origin, and if it is ever withdrawn, the Fed returns the very same bars the account holder deposited.
Italy’s gold presence overseas is mostly a matter of history. After the war, Italy gradually became an exporting country again, built up foreign currency reserves, mostly dollars, and converted part of them into gold. In 1947, for instance, the Bank of Italy bought 26.6 tonnes from the Bank of Canada using dollar funds held in New York, and the bars were deposited directly with the Federal Reserve. Much of that gold simply stayed where it had been bought.
But the explanation isn’t purely historical. Via Nazionale points out that spreading the metal across different countries helps diversify and minimise risk, and that keeping part of it in major financial centres allows it to be mobilised more quickly, avoiding the time and cost of transport.
And this is precisely where the Dutch move becomes interesting.
The Netherlands chooses London
Amsterdam didn’t simply bring its bars back home. About 59 tonnes were sold in New York and repurchased in London. More than 27 tonnes were physically transferred from the United States and Canada to Zeist, while a similar quantity of gold already meeting international standards was moved from Zeist to London. The Dutch reserve stayed exactly the same, at 612.4 tonnes. What changed was its geography.
That may be the most telling detail. The Netherlands isn’t arguing that gold is only safe once it’s back home: it judged its exposure to North America too concentrated and decided it made more sense to increase the share held in London, a major global hub for trading physical gold. For a central bank, security also means spreading assets across multiple jurisdictions, custodians and markets.
France out of New York, Germany still in
The Netherlands isn’t alone. In 2025 the Banque de France sold the last 129 tonnes it held in New York, equal to 5% of its reserves, buying an equivalent amount of gold in Europe instead. France’s total stock stayed unchanged at 2,437 tonnes. The official reason was mainly technical: those old American bars didn’t meet the quality standard Paris uses, so it opted to sell them on the spot rather than deal with shipping and reprocessing. But the geographic outcome stands: France no longer keeps that share of gold in New York.
Germany has taken a different path. In 2013 the Bundesbank began transferring 300 tonnes from New York and 374 tonnes from Paris to Frankfurt, completing the move by 2017. But it didn’t abandon the United States: at the end of 2025 it still held 1,236 tonnes at the New York Fed, nearly 37% of its reserves, with 1,710 tonnes in Frankfurt and 404 in London.
Three countries, three strategies. France has closed out its New York position, the Netherlands has sharply cut its weight there, and Germany still treats it as one of the pillars of its custody network. Italy keeps 43.29% of its gold in the United States.
And the shift extends beyond these individual cases. In the World Gold Council’s 2026 survey, 10% of central banks surveyed said they had diversified their overseas storage locations over the past year, up from just 2% in the previous survey, with another 9% saying they plan to do so within the next twelve months.
Could Italy move its gold?
There is no rule requiring the Bank of Italy to keep 43.29% of its reserves in the United States. But the decision isn’t the government’s to make. Official reserves are managed independently by Via Nazionale, within the framework of Eurosystem rules and ECB guidance needed to safeguard the single monetary policy. The law also gives the Bank of Italy the authority to trade gold abroad, within the limits set by European regulations.
Even the provision passed in the 2026 budget law, stating that gold reserves “belong to the Italian people,” hasn’t changed this setup. Governor Fabio Panetta clarified as much in March: the provision changes neither how gold is recorded on the Bank’s balance sheet nor the purposes for which it is held.
The question, then, isn’t whether Italy can change the geography of its gold holdings. It can. The question is whether it should.
Keeping more gold in Italy would mean reducing exposure to foreign custodians and jurisdictions and physically holding a larger share of the country’s assets. Keeping a substantial portion in major international hubs, on the other hand, means spreading risk and having the metal where it can be quickly mobilised.
The Dutch central bank never said the United States is no longer safe. It made no mention of confiscation and didn’t name Donald Trump. But it did something arguably more significant: it openly added geopolitics to the list of criteria used to decide where a country’s gold should rest.
The Meloni government
Italy’s gold returned to the centre of political debate in 2025. That April, Fabio Rampelli, deputy speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, said that with talks under way with Washington over tariffs, it wasn’t the moment to add fuel to the fire: Italy’s gold held abroad remained an important issue, he said, just not one to tackle at that time. A few months later, Brothers of Italy reopened a different chapter, that of reserve ownership, leading to the provision declaring the gold belongs to “the Italian people” — a declaration that changed neither the management of the bars nor their geographic location.
That gold remains Italian no matter which vault it sits in. The real question is a different one: whether, in a world that central banks themselves now see as more unstable, it still makes sense to keep more than 43% of it in the United States.
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