If you’ve only ever wanted to eat at Italian restaurants, make pasta almost every day for dinner, and entertain Italian vacations regardless of season, much to the chagrin of your over-saturated friends and family, then you’re about to feel extremely vindicated: Italian cooking has been officially recognized an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. The announcement was made on Wednesday, December 10, during the cultural organization’s assembly in Delhi.
Rather than selecting specific food items like, say, sfogliatelle from Campania, agnolotti pasta from Piedmont, or Chianti Classico wine, the designation of Italian cuisine in its entirety emphasizes instead the human and human-made elements of the nation’s cooking tradition. UNESCO’s entry for Italian cooking on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage highlights its artisanal techniques, communal nature, “intimacy with food, respect for ingredients, and shared moments around the table.”
“We are so happy about what happened today,” says Maddalena Fossati, the editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Traveller Italia and La Cucina Italiana, the Italian food magazine (both are published by Traveler‘s parent company Condé Nast). Fossati was the driving force behind the recognition, and first developed the idea during COVID when she witnessed just how linked food and the Italian people are. She brought the concept to the Italian government, who then named Fossati as President of the Committee Promoting Italian Cuisine for UNESCO Recognition.
The delegation worked tirelessly for five years to bring the case to UNESCO. “The value of Italians is through our food. That is who we are,” Fossati tells Traveler on a phone call from Delhi. “[This recognition] is really history—for the country, for Italians all around the world, and for everybody that loves Italian cooking.”
The designation of an entire nation’s cuisine is a global first for the United Nations organization, which in the past has recognized specific dishes, like tomyum kung, a prawn soup from Thailand, or traditions associated with a particular cuisine, like ceviche making in Peru.
In the same way that UNESCO World Heritage Sites spotlight physical places and monuments worth preserving and celebrating, UNESCO’s compendium of Intangible Cultural Heritage means to do the same for cultural practices representative of humanity’s ingenuity, as well as safeguard traditions at risk of dying out. For example, in Italy, arts like opera singing, pizzaiuolo (Neapolitan pizza making), and traditional violin craftsmanship in the town of Cremona were inscribed on the list in 2023, 2017, and 2012, respectively.
