Italy Quotes: 87 Quotes About Italy to Inspire Your Trip!

There are so many fantastic Italy quotes. Whether they’re summing up Italian style, wit, food or surroundings, quotes about Italy always seem to get to the heart of the country!

It’s great just reading them; most are so evocative that they immediately bring back a memory of a previous trip. You can see yourself strolling through the streets of Venice, or sampling that delicious lasagna in Florence, or walking in the sunshine of the Amalfi Coast. Or it’ll conjure up the people – the new friend you made in a park, that beloved waiter, or the random people you saw whilst looking down from your balcony.

But what’s even better than Italy quotes which bring back memories of the country? Italy quotes that inspire you to visit again; that’s what!

Here’s a hand-picked selection of quotes for your enjoyment – whether you’re thinking of visiting Italy again, just want some Italy quotes for Instagram, or feel like walking down memory lane!

By the way, if you are indeed thinking of visiting Florence or the Amalfi Coast (incliding Sorrento and Positano), click the links and check out my guides!

 

Italy quotes for Instagram

“You may have the universe if I may have Italy” – Giuseppe Verdi

“The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.” – Mary Shelley

“Italian culture is so deeply soaked in an appreciation of the good things in life.” –  Mariska Hargitay

“Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, “Italy”.” – Robert Browning, Selected Poems

“I gasp for air if I don’t get to breathe Italian air once a year.” – Danny Meyer

“For sure, in Italy, the sun always shines.” – Aleksandar Mitrovic

“Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.” – Bertrand Russell

“A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.” – Samuel Johnson

“I love places that have an incredible history. I love the Italian way of life. I love the food. I love the people. I love the attitudes of Italians.” – Elton John

“The most stylish country in the world is Italy.” – Nick Rhodes

“In Italy, they add work and life on to food and wine.” – Robin Leach

“One doesn’t come to Italy for niceness,” was the retort; “one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!” – E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“I’m a pretty calm person. That came from living in Italy for a long time. Nothing works, nothing is on time. You have to learn to deal with it.” – Tom Ford

“I couldn’t settle in Italy – it was like living in a foreign country.” – Ian Rush

“There is in the DNA of the Italians a bit of madness, which in the overwhelming majority of cases is positive. It is genius. It is talent. It’s the masterpieces of art. It’s the food, fashion, everything that makes Italy great in the world.” –  Matteo Renzi

“Wasting time is something that people do or feel all over the world, not just in Italy.” – Paolo Sorrentino

“Italians know that what matters is style, not fashion. Italian style does not have social or age boundaries.” – Stefano Gabbana

“All of my youth growing up in my Italian family was focused around the table. That’s where I learned about love.” – Leo Buscaglia

“Italy is” quotes

“First of all, let’s get one thing straight. Your Italy and our Italia are not the same thing. Italy is a soft drug peddled in predictable packages, such as hills in the sunset, olive groves, lemon trees, white wine, and raven-haired girls. Italia, on the other hand, is a maze. It’s alluring, but complicated. It’s the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters, or in the course of ten minutes. Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis.” – Beppe Severgnini, La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind

“In Italy there’s perhaps a little less space than in Spain, but there’s certainly as much sunshine.” – Carlo Rubbia

“What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.” – Erica Jong

“Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.” – E. M. Forster

“Watching Italians eat (especially men, I have to say) is a form of tourism the books don’t tell you about. They close their eyes, raise their eyebrows into accent marks, and make sounds of acute appreciation. It’s fairly sexy. Of course I don’t know how these men behave at home, if they help with the cooking or are vain and boorish and mistreat their wives. I realized Mediterranean cultures have their issues. Fine, don’t burst my bubble. I didn’t want to marry these guys, I just wanted to watch.” – Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

“I don’t like being called ‘macho.’ Macho basically means stupid and a real Italian man is not macho, he’s smart. That’s smart in both senses: elegant and clever.” – Andrea Bocelli

“I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.” – Mario Batali

“Italy will never be a normal country. Because Italy is Italy. If we were a normal country, we wouldn’t have Rome. We wouldn’t have Florence. We wouldn’t have the marvel that is Venice” -. Matteo Renzi

“I like playing Italian teams. To me, they are the fairest sportsmen of them all. I don’t agree with the Italy stereotypes – I trust in what I have experienced and witnessed.” –  Thomas Muller

“Italian style is a natural attitude. It is about a life of good taste. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Simple but with good taste. Luxury is possible to buy. Good taste is not.” – Diego Della Valle

“I find it beautiful when we’re in Italy that everybody sits down at the table together. My mother-in-law is like, ‘It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the house, who is fighting, who is upset, who has appointments, you sit down at that table at one o’clock.'” – Debi Mazar

“Move to Italy. I mean it: they know about living in debt; they don’t care. I stayed out there for five months while I was making a film called ‘Order Of Death,’ and they’ve really got it sussed. Nice cars. Sharp suits. Great food. Stroll into work at 10. Lunch from 12 till three. Leave work at five. That’s living!” – John Lydon

“I spent five years in Italy, and the Italians have a slightly different lifestyle. Everything is a bit slower and more easygoing. You can feel that when you live there; you become a little more relaxed about typically ‘German’ things like accuracy and punctuality.” – Miroslav Klose

“Clea and I were touring one of the cathedrals in Italy, and in front of the whole tour I go ‘That’s so cute! Look, they have birdbaths in the church!” – Hilary Duff, Elixir

“Italy was where the soul went to find calm and love, and I wanted to hold the best of it in the palm of my hand.” – Lisa Brennan-Jobs

“I find that other countries have this or this, but Italy is the only one that has it all for me. The culture, the cuisine, the people, the landscape, the history. Just everything to me comes together there.” –  Frances Mayes

“In America, one must be something, but in Italy one can simply be.”  –  Pietros Maneos, The Italian Pleasures of Gabriele Paterkallos

Quotes about Tuscany

“My idea of heaven still is to drive the gravel farm roads of Umbria and Tuscany, very pleasantly lost.”  – Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

“I remember the first time I went to Italy when I was eighteen, I was in Florence and there were all these eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-olds gliding past on Vespas with crinkly, long, hair, and I thought I was on the set of a movie. I couldn’t believe that this was going on and I hadn’t known about it before. I was flabbergasted.” – Walter Kirn

“Americans who visit Tuscany or Umbria love the landscape: the silvery olive groves, the fields of sunflowers, the vineyards, the stone houses and barns.” – Anthony Lewis

“Tuscany is so full of history and beauty – you meet wonders of art and architecture on almost every corner. But I love the region’s homier aspects: the special sweetness of the tomatoes, the soft mozzarella, the heady scents of basil and garlic everywhere.” – Trudie Styler

“Florence is perhaps best known for being the seat of Renaissance art, and rightly so: A greatest-hits collection of artists passed through its streets – Michelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli, and Brunelleschi among them.” – Hanya Yanagihara

“One of my ambitions is to move to Tuscany. I like the idea of getting a vineyard. I love being under the sun and being casual and comfortable. That’s my idea of heaven.” – Paolo Nutini

“The very beginning of European aesthetics started from Florence. Everything here was beauty, money, and creativity, the power of the good money.” – Alessandro Michele

“I walked across Tuscany from Siena to Rome, which was a lovely way to see the landscape. It was sunny but not too hot, and we made detours to look at treasures – churches, paintings, little hill villages. The first couple of days, you feel your knees are turning to jelly. But, at the end, you feel very limber. I hope I can always do it.” – Diana Quick

“Maybe money can’t buy happiness, but it can get you a nice little villa in Tuscany, and that’s close enough for me.”  –Lois Greiman, One Hot Mess

Quotes about Venice

“Venice, it’s temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Venetians feel affection and loyalty to their city, rather than to the Italian state.” – Donna Leon

“Venice never quite seems real, but rather an ornate film set suspended on the water.” – Frida Giannini

“Everything in Venice is just a little bit creepy, as much as it’s beautiful.” – Christopher Moore

“It’s so easy for me to get caught up in the feeling of a city like Venice, where everything is just beautiful color and gorgeous buildings that are so peaceful. You can roam around and get lost in the labyrinth.” – Nanette Lepore

“When writers for adults contemplate Venice, they behold decay, dereliction and death. Thomas Mann, Daphne du Maurier, L. P. Hartley and Salley Vickers have all dispatched hapless protagonists to Italy, where they see Venice – and die.” –  Jan Mark

“If I could live in one city and do every single thing I do there, I would choose Venice. You can’t turn your head without seeing something amazing.” – Nile Rodgers

“Venice is the perfect place for a phase of art to die. No other city on earth embraces entropy quite like this magical floating mall.” – Jerry Saltz

“All of Venice is tattered, resewn, achingly lovely, and like an enchantress, she disarms me, making off with the very breath of me.”  –Marlena de Blasi, A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure

“Venice is eternity itself.” – Joseph Brodsky

Quotes about Rome

“Each, in its own way, was unforgettable. It would be difficult to — Rome! By all means, Rome. I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.”  – Audrey Hepburn

“Italy has changed. But Rome is Rome.” – Robert De Niro

“If I’m in Rome for only 48 hours, I would consider it a sin against God to not eat cacio e pepe, the most uniquely Roman of pastas, in some crummy little joint where Romans eat. I’d much rather do that than go to the Vatican. That’s Rome to me.” – Anthony Bourdain

“The thing I love about Rome is that is has so many layers. In it, you can follow anything that interests you: town planning, architecture, churches or culture. It’s a city rich in antiquity and early Christian treasures, and just endlessly fascinating. There’s nowhere else like it.” – Claire Tomalin

“She had always been fond of history, and here [in Rome] was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine.” – Henry James,  The Portrait of A Lady

“Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.” –  Anatole Broyard

“I am a sucker for those old traditional places, and Rome is as good as it gets, particularly when you throw in Italian food.” – Roger Federer

“To my taste, the men in Rome are ridiculously, hurtfully, stupidly beautiful. More beautiful even than Roman women, to be honest. Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say– no detail spared in the quest for perfection. They’re like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.”  – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”  – G K Chesterton

“I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” – Augustus

In Rome, I particularly love the history, churches, sculptures and architecture and the fact that you can walk along a tiny cobbled street and turn the corner to find the Trevi Fountain.” – Philip Treacy

 

Quotes about Italian food

“The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you’re hungry again.” – George Miller

“I spent a college semester in a small town in Italy – and that is where I truly tasted food for the first time.” – Alton Brown

“Like most of Italy, Neapolitans like their food, and there are restaurants everywhere. But to make like a true Neapolitan, grab a pizza from a street vendor and eat it there and then. We tried a pizza that’s folded over four times to make it nice and portable, then you eat it straight out of paper, like fish and chips.” – Paul Hollywood

“As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.” – Mario Batali

“It’s in the nature of Italians to live life with a positive tone and to celebrate the invitations that come along in life. Italian food is so conducive to all of that.” – Lidia Bastianich

“Italy will always have the best food.” – Diane von Furstenberg

“If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant?” – Martin Scorsese

“The commonplace about Italian cooking is that it’s very simple; in practice, the simplicity needs to be learned, and the best way to learn it is to go to Italy and see it firsthand.” – Bill Buford

“I once went to Alba, Italy, during their white truffle festival, and I was like, ‘Just leave me here!'” – Amber Valletta

“Life is too short. If we’re in Italy, have pizza and pasta. But not every day.” – Harley Pasternak

“We always ate with gusto…It would have offended the cook if we had nibbled or picked…Our mothers and zie [aunties] didn’t inquire as to the states of our bellies; they just put the food on our plates.
‘You only ask sick people if they’re hungry,’ my mother said. ‘Everyone else must eat, eat!’
But when Italians say ‘Mangia! Mangia!’ they’re not just talking about food. They’re trying to get you to stay with them, to sit by them at the table for as long as possible. The meals that my family ate together- the many courses, the time in between at the table or on the mountain by the sea, the hours spent talking loudly and passionately and unyieldingly and laughing hysterically the way Neapolitans do- were designed to prolong our time together; the food was, of course, meant to nourish us, but it was also meant to satisfy, in some deeper way, our endless hunger for one another.”  – Sergio Esposito, Passion on the Vine

“So… Italian gelato. Take the deliciousness of a regular ice-cream cone, times it by a million, then sprinkle it with crushed-up unicorn horns.” – Jenna Evans Welch, Love & Gelato

Quotes about Italian art

“In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” – Graham Greene

“Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one’s own senses, and THIS makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captain of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors… In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Not much was really invented during the Renaissance, if you don’t count modern civilization.” – P. J. O’Rourke

Quotes about Italian architecture

“As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of a vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens to accomplish it. She is today one vast museum of magnificence and misery. All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals. And for every beggar in America, Italy can show a hundred – and rags and vermin to match. It is the wretchedest, princeliest land on earth.
Look at the grande Doumo of Florence – a vast pile that has been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly finished yet. Like all other men,
I fell down and worshiped it, but when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, too suggestive, and I said. “Oh, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don’t you rob your church?” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

“Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building after seeing Italy” -. Frances Burney

“Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts.” – Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. It’s the art of putting all your energy into one thing; it’s the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture.” – Renzo Piano

“Every one of my buildings begins with an Italian journey.” – Alvar Aalto

“The Italians have long known what makes a livable town or city.” – Norman Foster

Share these Italy quotes!

I hope you’ve enjoyed these quotes about Italy! Just remember: all the Italy quotes in the world can’t compete with the beauty of Italy in the flesh. Feel free to hit the “Italy” section in my top menu, and get some travel inspiration! Or even better, check Momondo for some sweet flight deals! C’mon: you owe it to yourself.

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