By Rebecca Ruiz, forbes.com

Forget Paris or Rome. If you're desperately seeking sex, head to San Antonio or Cincinnati instead.

Residents of these metros enjoy vigorous sex lives--at least their condom and contraceptive purchases at grocery and drug stores indicate as much. These purchases placed them in the top 10 of our survey of America's Most Lustful Cities.

In the absence of government or academic research on the sexual practices of Americans in the country's 50 largest cities, we turned to the market for answers. Research firm ACNielsen provided us with a per-capita index of over-the-counter contraceptive purchases in major U.S. markets for the past 52 weeks. The average index was 100.

Complete List: America's 10 Most Lustful Cities

Denver topped the list with an index of 289, which translates into 189% more contraceptives sales than normally expected for a market its size. Other cities that ranked in the top 10 were Seattle, Washington, D.C. and Salt Lake City. Metropolitan areas one might expect to see ranked, like New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, had average or below average indexes.

Though condom and contraceptive sales are an imperfect way of measuring sexual desire--this is especially true for monogamous couples and those in same-sex relationships--they do provide a broad picture of sexual activity in each city.

Dr. Kees Rietmeijer, director for the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Control Program at the Public Health Department in Denver, says higher-than-average purchases of condoms in the Mile-High City could be the result of demographics. A younger consumer might be more apt to buy protection consistently, for example, and Denver is crawling with young professionals. On the other hand, Rietmeijer says public health officials have been proactive about education and STD screening since the mid-90s.

"I would love for Denver to be the condom capital of the U.S.," Rietmeijer says. "We do have campaigns to educate the public about avoiding unwanted pregnancy and STDs." Those outreach efforts recently included a highly visible billboard featuring a man wearing a quizzical look and the tag line: "Who brought syphilis to the party?" The ad was prompted by a spike in the number of local syphilis cases.

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