Pizza and pasta celebrated as Italian cooking makes UN cultural heritage list

Customers enjoy their pasta at a restaurant in Rome (Gregorio Borgia/AP)

Foodies have been given another reason to celebrate their pizza, pasta and tiramisu as a UN agency listed Italian cooking as part of the world’s “intangible” cultural heritage.

UN cultural agency Unesco added the rituals surrounding Italian food preparation and consumption to its list of the world’s traditional practices and expressions.

It is a designation celebrated alongside the more well-known Unesco list of World Heritage sites, on which Italy is well represented with locations such as Rome’s Colosseum and the ancient city of Pompeii.

Cooking is a gesture of love, a way in which we tell something about ourselves to others and how we take care of others

The citation did not mention specific dishes or recipes but highlighted the cultural importance Italians place on the rituals of cooking and eating: the Sunday family lunch, the tradition of grandmothers teaching grandchildren how to fold tortellini dough just so, even the act of coming together to share a meal.

“Cooking is a gesture of love, a way in which we tell something about ourselves to others and how we take care of others,” said Pier Luigi Petrillo, a member of the Italian Unesco campaign and professor of comparative law at Rome’s La Sapienza University.

“This tradition of being at the table, of stopping for a while at lunch, a bit longer at dinner, and even longer for big occasions, it’s not very common around the world,” he said.

For us Italians, cuisine is not just food or a collection of recipes. It is much more: it is culture, tradition, work, wealth

Premier Giorgia Meloni celebrated the designation, which she said honoured Italians and their national identity.

“Because for us Italians, cuisine is not just food or a collection of recipes. It is much more: it is culture, tradition, work, wealth,” she said in a statement.

It is by no means the first time a country’s cuisine has been recognised as a cultural expression: in 2010, Unesco listed the “gastronomic meal of the French” as part of the world’s intangible heritage, highlighting the French custom of celebrating important moments with food.

Other national cuisines and cultural practices surrounding them have also been added in recent years: the “cider culture” of Spain’s Asturian region, the Ceebu Jen culinary tradition of Senegal, the traditional way of making cheese in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

🔴 BREAKING

New inscription on the #IntangibleHeritage List: Italian cooking, between sustainability and biocultural diversity, #Italy🇮🇹.

Congratulations!https://t.co/xoL14QjPPR #LivingHeritage pic.twitter.com/2iY86Obn3n

— UNESCO 🏛️ #Education #Sciences #Culture 🇺🇳 (@UNESCO) December 10, 2025

Unesco meets every year to consider adding new candidates to its lists of intangible heritage. There are three types: one is a representative list, another lists practices that are in “urgent” need of safeguarding and the third is a list of good safeguarding practices.

This year, the committee meeting in New Delhi considered 53 nominations for the representative list, which already had 788 items. Other nominees included the Swiss yodelling, the handloom weaving technique used to make Bangladesh’s Tangail sarees, and Chile’s family circuses.

In its submission, Italy emphasised the “sustainability and biocultural diversity” of its food.

Its campaign noted how Italy’s simple cuisine valued seasonality, fresh produce and limiting waste, while its variety highlighted its regional culinary differences and influences from migrants and others.

Massimo Dante prepares food at his restaurant in Rome (Gregorio Borgia/AP)

“For me, Italian cuisine is the best, top of the range. Number one. Nothing comes close,” said Francesco Lenzi, a pasta maker at Rome’s Osteria da Fortunata restaurant, near the Piazza Navona.

“There are people who say, ‘No, spaghetti comes from China’. OK, fine, but here we have turned noodles into a global phenomenon. Today, wherever you go in the world, everyone knows the word spaghetti. Everyone knows pizza.”

Mirella Pozzoli, a tourist visiting Rome’s Pantheon from the Lombardy region in northern Italy, said the mere act of dining together was special to Italians:

“Sitting at the table with family or friends is something that we Italians cherish and care about deeply. It’s a tradition of conviviality that you won’t find anywhere else in the world,” she said.