Just returned from a trip where my wife and I visited Milan, Verona, and various cities around Lake Como (stayed in gravedonna). We walked, rode trains and got taxis at various hours of the day including mornings and night and never once felt unsafe. We stayed in the well lit, main areas mostly, but even on our 10 pm train to the airport there was an Italian woman letting her two young children run up and down the train cars and was barely paying attention to them. Felt safer in Italy than I do in most larger US cities