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Italian Cuisine is now officially a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The decision taken yesterday, 10 December 2025, by the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee meeting in New Delhi, places Italy’s culinary tradition on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage and immediately becomes a political, economic and identity-defining event.
Claiming the significance of the recognition is Francesco Lollobrigida, Italy’s Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests, who on the day of the approval described it as a victory for the entire country.
“Italian Cuisine is a Heritage of Humanity. Today Italy has won, and this is a celebration that belongs to everyone, because it speaks of our roots, our creativity, and our ability to transform tradition into universal value.”
Lollobrigida links the recognition to the deeper dimension of national culture: not merely a tribute to taste, but a seal on a heritage made of gestures, knowledge and relationships. This perspective is reiterated in the second part of his statement:
“This recognition celebrates the strength of our culture as national identity, pride and vision. Italian Cuisine tells the story of all of us, of a people who have preserved their knowledge and transformed it into excellence, generation after generation.”
The Minister stresses one key point: the candidacy was not a top-down initiative, but the result of a broad-based community effort bringing together families, farmers, producers and restaurateurs.
“It is a celebration of families who pass down ancient flavours, of farmers who safeguard the land, of producers who work with passion, and of restaurateurs who bring the authentic value of Italy to the world. To them, and to everyone who worked with dedication on this candidacy, goes my deepest gratitude.”
However, the UNESCO recognition goes beyond celebration. In Lollobrigida’s view, it also represents a clear strategic framework aimed at protecting Made in Italy and strengthening supply chain competitiveness:
“This recognition is a source of pride, but also of awareness of the further value that our products, territories and supply chains will gain. It will be an additional tool to counter those who try to exploit the value that the world recognises in Made in Italy, and it will create new opportunities for jobs, local wealth and the continuation of a tradition that UNESCO has now recognised as a Heritage of Humanity.”
Behind the Minister’s words lies the very architecture of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage: not collections of objects, but practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills that communities recognise as their own. It is a living heritage, passed down through generations, constantly adapting and evolving.
In Italy’s case, this heritage takes shape in markets and home kitchens, popular festivals and restaurants, agricultural and maritime landscapes, dialects and recipe books—an ongoing balance between memory and contemporaneity.
The path leading to the New Delhi decision began on 23 March 2023, when the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests and the Ministry of Culture officially announced Italy’s candidacy. Rather than selecting a single iconic dish, the dossier presented a cultural model: a way of understanding food rooted in community experience, conscious selection of raw materials, conviviality, knowledge transmission, and respect for seasons and territories.
From this perspective emerged the definition of Italian cuisine as a “cuisine of affection”—a space where memory, care, relationships and identity intersect. Recipes are not merely technical instructions, but stories of families and communities, reflecting the bond between natural landscapes and daily life, between producers and consumers.
The candidacy also rests on the long-standing work of three institutions that have helped build an organised memory of Italian cuisine. The Italian Academy of Cuisine, founded in 1953, has documented and studied gastronomic traditions for decades. The Casa Artusi Foundation, established in 2007, brought domestic cooking back to the forefront through the legacy of Pellegrino Artusi, turning it into a contemporary laboratory. The magazine “La Cucina Italiana”, published since 1929, has chronicled nearly a century of changes in taste, techniques and lifestyles.
From a communication standpoint, the journey symbolically began on 1 July 2023 with the launch of the candidacy aboard the training ship Amerigo Vespucci, departing on the Vespucci World Tour and the Villaggio Italia. The ship became a travelling ambassador of Italian cuisine, hosting events and storytelling across international ports.
On 4 August 2023, at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, the official logo of the candidacy—designed by the Italian State Mint and Polygraphic Institute—was unveiled, symbolically linking ancient heritage and contemporary food culture.
At the end of the year, on 14 December 2023, the conference “Italian Space Food” at the Italian Embassy in Washington introduced another powerful image: Italian pasta travelling into space with the Axiom 3 mission, launched on 10 January 2024 with Italian products aboard the ISS—an emblem of how tradition and innovation can coexist.
During 2024–2025, the candidacy became a recurring presence at major international events. The G7 Agriculture Summit in Ortigia, the “Agricoltura È” initiative in Rome, and leading European and global agri-food fairs provided platforms to present Italian cuisine as a synthesis of supply chains, territories and public policies. Parallel appearances at major sporting events—from the Piazza di Siena equestrian competition to the Ryder Cup, the Giro d’Italia and the Rugby World Championship—linked food culture to sport, tourism and Italy’s global image.
On 10 June 2025, the grand finale of the Vespucci Tour in Genoa featured a drone show dedicated to Italian cuisine as cultural heritage. Shortly after, on 29 June 2025, a major event in New York brought the theme to the heart of Manhattan, with projections in Times Square and an institutional gathering at Gotham Hall.
On 21 September 2025, “Sunday Lunch – Italians at the Table” transformed the candidacy into a shared ritual, with hundreds of Italian squares and numerous embassies worldwide hosting convivial moments centred on the table as a space of relationship and identity.
On the technical front, 10 November 2025 marked the first positive evaluation of the dossier “Italian Cuisine, between sustainability and biocultural diversity”. The final decision on 10 December 2025 by the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee closed the process and opened a new phase of active safeguarding.
Here lies Lollobrigida’s political reading: recognition as a lever to enhance the value of Italian production, combat imitation, strengthen domestic supply chains and support communities that live from food and tourism. Italian cuisine is now formally an intangible asset of humanity. The challenge for policymakers and for all actors along the supply chain will be ensuring that this title remains rooted in the everyday authenticity of kitchens, countryside and territories that made it possible.
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