In the early Middle Ages, the Central Italian area extended north into Romagna and covered all of modern-day Lazio.

[1] In addition, the dialect of Rome has undergone considerable Tuscanization from the fifteenth century onwards, such that it has lost many of its Central Italian features.

The Central Italian dialect area is bisected by isoglosses that roughly follow a line running from Rome to Ancona (see map).

)[4] Pellegrini's Carta dei dialetti d’Italia[5] features the following divisions: Except for its southern fringe, the Area Mediana (in the narrow sense) is characterized by a contrast between the final vowels /u/ and /o/, which distinguishes it from both the Area Perimediana to the north and from Southern Italo-Romance to the south.

Most of the Area Mediana shows voicing of plosives after nasal consonants, as in [manˈt̬ellu] ‘cloak’, a feature shared with neighbouring Southern Italo-Romance.