Italian food is arguably one of the world’s most recognized and popular cuisines. The northern city of Bologna, for example, was nominated to have the best food in the world in Condé Nast Traveller’s 2022 Reader’s Choice Awards. And it seems like Italy’s gastronomy may soon have official UNESCO recognition.
In March 2023, The Italian ministries of agriculture and culture banded together to submit a bid to have the nation’s cuisine recognized as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage for 2023. The country will need to wait until December 2025 for an official decision.
UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage includes, “traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.”
The Italian government highlighted in the nomination dossier the intangible cultural heritages and social rites the nation’s cuisine represents. It emphasized not only the biocultural diversity of the country, but also the tradition of preparing and eating a meal with family and loved ones. These two pillars, family and food, are major binding elements in Italian culture.
This isn’t the first time Italian food has sought UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status. In 2017, Neapolitan-style pizza making was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list and inscribed as “The Art of Neapolitan ‘Pizzaiuolo’” The nomination was supported by 2 million Neapolitans. The status was awarded to the practice of preparing the dough and cooking it in a wood-fired oven, a process that originates in Naples. UNESCO considers Neapolitan-style pizza-making an art that “fosters social gatherings and intergenerational exchange, and assumes a character of the spectacular, with the Pizzaiuolo at the center of their ‘bottega’”.
Asia London Palomba
Asia London Palomba is a trilingual freelance journalist from Rome, Italy. In the past, her work on culture, travel, and history has been published in The Boston Globe, Atlas Obscura, The Christian Science Monitor, and Grub Street, New York Magazine's food section. In her free time, Asia enjoys traveling home to Italy to spend time with family and friends, drinking Hugo Spritzes, and making her nonna's homemade cavatelli.