This dataset contains 3,170 Italian tweets about the earthquakes that stroke the Emilia Romagna regional district in Italy on 20 May 2012 starting from 4 a.m. local time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Northern_Italy_earthquakes). In particular, 3 strong earthquakes occurred in a time span of a few hours near to the Finale Emilia, Bondeno, and Sermide villages, in a wide rural area. The strongest of these earthquakes has been assigned a 6.1 magnitude. They caused 7 deaths and severe damage to many of the ancient, rural buildings of the area. Data for the this dataset have been collected via the historical paid services of Twitter data resellers.