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.

)[4] Pellegrini[5] further divides Central Italian into the following groups: Except for its southern fringe, the Area Mediana (narrow sense) features a contrast between the final vowels /u/ and /o/, a feature that 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.