In A World First, Italy’s National Cuisine Becomes UNESCO World Heritage

Every nation claims its food tells a story. Our Apennine neighbours have written a bestseller.

Far beyond the borders of the Boot, everyone’s favourite food memory includes at least one Italian dish. A perfectly crispy thin-base pizza for instance, a delicious seafood pasta, or a sophisticated risotto. Maybe it was Grandpa Antonio who brought his own nonna’s time-honoured recipes to New York when the family emigrated, or, in more recent times, when international travelers flocked to Italy, they may have had an unforgettable dining experience in a modest trattoria. Italian cuisine has long since convinced diners of its virtues. And now, Italy achieved what no other country has managed: recognition for an entire national cuisine as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

^{Video via UNESCO on YouTube}

The unanimous decision, made on 10 December in New Delhi, marks the first time a complete culinary tradition, rather than specific dishes or regional practices, has earned this distinction. The announcement carries particular significance given the competition. Italy’s nomination, titled “Italian Cuisine between Sustainability and Bio-cultural Diversity,” competed against sixty applications from fifty-six countries. When the decision came through, the committee room erupted in prolonged applause, proof of the universal appeal of Italian cooking

Previous UNESCO food recognitions have been notably specific. French gastronomy earned inscription in 2010, but only for the gastronomic meal as a social custom. Traditional Mexican cuisine received similar honours that same year, focused on the Michoacán paradigm. Other inscriptions have celebrated particular dishes or preparation methods. Italy’s designation breaks new ground by encompassing an entire national culinary system, from agricultural practices through preparation techniques to the social rituals of shared meals.

The scope matters because Italian cuisine functions as a complete cultural circuit. Italians care about food production, honour seasonal rhythms, maintain regional variations, and use meals to strengthen social bonds. The image is familiar: parents teaching their children to recognise properly risen dough or to hand crank pasta… This is passing along not merely technique but sensory knowledge, family history, and the understanding that some things simply take the time they take.

^{Photo by Klaus Nielsen on pexels.com}

The sustainability dimension proved central to this evaluation. Italian culinary tradition evolved through practical necessity, developing methods to preserve abundance and transform scarcity into nourishment. Making stock from bones, turning yesterday’s bread into panzanella, preserving summer vegetables for winter meals reflects a philosophy that wastes nothing and respects everything. It is the original nose-to-tail and leaf-to-root concept born of common sense rather than culinary school theory. It does not escape irony when UNESCO now celebrates as sustainability what Italian grandmothers have been practising for centuries under the simpler heading of “thrift.”

Even more essentially though, la cucina italiana reflects an almost fanatical devotion to quality over complexity. Italian cooking operates on a deceptively simple principle: start with the ripest tomatoes, the freshest mozzarella, the best olive oil… and then have the good sense to leave them alone. A proper pizza Margherita or homemade gnocchi only require a few store cupboard ingredients. The genius lies in understanding that when ingredients are this good, any excess becomes vandalism.

^{Photo by Laura Peruchi on Unsplash}^{; licenced under the Unsplash License}

Beyond that, Italian cuisine survives as living tradition precisely because communities continue practising and adapting it rather than freezing it as museum artefact. Each of Italy’s twenty regions is fiercely proud and protective of local traditions. Someone from Bologna will lecture at length about the proper meat-to-tomato ratio in ragù. Neapolitans hold strong opinions about pizza dough hydration. A Roman might come to blows over carbonara technique.

Yet these regional distinctions, far from fragmenting the tradition, reinforce its richness. Italian cuisine survives precisely because it resists homogenisation, remaining rooted in specific places, seasons, and communities. Once seated at the shared table though, all differences are put aside, and all agree that the most important ingredients of any good meal, from the Alps to Sicily, are love, time, and good company.

^{Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash; licenced under the Unsplash License}

Italy already held thirteen items on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list before this addition. The country appeared twice previously in food-related inscriptions: the 2013 Mediterranean diet recognition and the 2017 Neapolitan pizza designation. But beyond bragging rights, such honours boost artisanal knowledge, and with it, the economy. After the recognition of Naples’ pizza-making tradition for example, accredited schools training pizzaioli increased by more than four hundred per cent. The cultural validation translated into educational expansion, renewed interest in traditional techniques, and the subsequent opening of hundreds of successful restaurants.

For those along the Côte d’Azur, where the border between France and Italy feels more like a suggestion than a barrier, the two countries’ culinary practices flow into each other seamlessly. The produce at Nice’s markets might have grown in Liguria. The olive oil could be from just beyond Ventimiglia, 20 km up the road. And many Niçois specialties, such as socca, soupe au pistou or tourte aux blettes, are deeply rooted in the Italian kitchen traditions that poor immigrants in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries brought to the French Riviera. Such simple but tasty food stands in sharp contrast to the other French culinary traditions that prize luxury ingredients and elaborate techniques above all else.

What Italians have always understood: food is the best way to relate to each other, and to nature. The historic new designation as world heritage simply makes formal what generations of practice have demonstrated all along.

Allora, tutti a tavola a mangiare, buon appetito!