Whether you’re planning an Italian vacay and want to feel inspired or need to score the perfect Instagram caption for that picture you took there, we have you covered. Dig into our list of 80 quotes about Italy and swoon over the country’s thousand charms!
Table of Contents
Short Instagram captions about Italy
These quotes about Italy will help you nail a caption for social media that will make all your followers hit the like button.
Life’s too short not to be Italian.
Unknown
Who can resist sleep at two or three in the afternoon in these sunlit parts of the Mediterranean?
André Aciman
Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.
Anna Akhmatova
Open my heart and you will see, engraved inside of it, ‘Italy’.
Robert Browning
A man has not fully lived until he experiences that gentle balmy clime of ancient empires, the land of lemon trees and the genius of Michelangelo.
E. A. Bucchianeri
Life is a combination of magic and pasta.
Federico Fellini
Italian culture is so deeply soaked in an appreciation of the good things in life.
Mariska Hargitay
Even now I miss Italy dearly, I dream about it every night.
Eila Hiltunen
A man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority.
Samuel Johnson
In Italy, they add work and life on to food and wine.
Robin Leach
Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.
Sophia Loren
I gasp for air if I don’t get to breathe Italian air once a year.
Danny Meyer
The most stylish country in the world is Italy.
Nick Rhodes
Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.
Bertrand Russell
The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.
Mary Shelley
You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
Giuseppe Verdi
Quotes about Italian destinations
It’s easy to fall for Italy in the abstract, but it’s particularly hard not to adopt a specific place in the country as your second home, whether a cosmopolis like Milan or a secluded haven like Capri.
Vedi Napoli e poi muori. — See Naples and then die.
Unknown
This typical Italian-style overstatement underscores the uniqueness of the Vesuvius-haunted city by claiming that only after visiting it one would have lived life to the fullest — not totally inaccurate, though!
Some people speak ill of Milan’s fog. I don’t know what the fog is like in other countries, but this fog in Milan is a great fog; it’s pleasant, affectionate, friendly. It binds you like a caress.
Carlo Campanini in “Invisible Chains”
Milan l’è on gran Milan. — Milan is a great Milan.
Giovanni D’Anzi
Despite not sounding very idiomatic in English, this quote is highly representative of Milan in that it’s the culmination to the city’s unofficial anthem, a tribute sung in the local dialect to the beloved golden statue that sits atop the Duomo — the Madonnina.
It is a place that ‘grows upon you’ every day. There seems to be always something to find out in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in.
Charles Dickens on Genoa
Naples is the flower of paradise. The last adventure of my life.
Alexandre Dumas
When I walk up the piazza of Santa Croce I feel as if it were not a Florentine nor a European church but a church built by and for the human race.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Mediterranean Paris. Such is Naples.
Gustave Flaubert
Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
Henry James
The very beginning of European aesthetics started from Florence. Everything here was beauty, money, and creativity, the power of the good money.
Alessandro Michele
Turin, dear friend, is a capital discovery … The first place where I am possible!
Friedrich Nietzsche
There was a magical timelessness to Capri, a special atmosphere, and a sense of history.
Kitty Pilgrim
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
Also Read: 70 Quotes About Rome That Will Inspire Your Next Trip
The turmoil and the daily come and go made Naples a populated and fibrillating city like Paris.
Marquis de Sade
Capri on the Amalfi Coast in Italy is my ultimate holiday destination.
Vidal Sassoon
The only place I might leave Naples for is Milan, the other great Italian metropolis.
Toni Servillo
Sure, Florence is touristy. But where else can you stroll the same pedestrian streets walked by Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Botticelli while savoring the world’s best gelato?
Rick Steves
Here we are at last. The Italian proverb says “See Naples and die” but I say, see Naples and live; for there seems a great deal worth living for.
Arthur John Strutt
Turin is a very fine city. In the matter of roominess it transcends anything that was ever dreamed of before, I fancy. It sits in the midst of a vast dead-level, and one is obliged to imagine that land may be had for the asking, and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it.
Mark Twain
Turin, who has ever said you’re not beautiful? / You’re ancient at night when you turn into a star. / You don’t speak out of fear of knowing too much.
Antonello Venditti
I love the great yet underrated song these verses are from, as it offers a very evocative portrayal of unified Italy’s elegant and austere first capital.
Also Read: 70 Venice Quotes That Tell You About the City of Canals
Quotes about Italian food
From Tuscan wine, to Neapolitan pizza, to tiramisù, to lasagne alla bolognese, everyone has a favorite Italian delicacy (or loves all of them equally like me). The following quotes about Italy by chefs and food experts let us know what is so exceptional about the country’s cuisine.
In Italy, food is an expression of love. It is how you show those around you that you care for them. Having a love for food means you also have a love for those you are preparing it for and for yourself.
Joe Bastianich
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
I love the simplicity, the ingredients, the culture, the history and the seasonality of Italian cuisine. In Italy, people do not travel. They cook the way grandma did, using fresh ingredients and what is available in season.
Anne Burrell
It is no coincidence that, on all four sides, in all four corners, the borders of the Roman Empire stopped where wine could no longer be made.
Neel Burton
Italian cuisine is the most famous and beloved cuisine in the world for a reason. Accessible, comforting, seemingly simple but endlessly delicious, it never disappoints, just as it seems to never change.
Matt Goulding
I spent the next couple of hours either walking around with a gelato in my hand or on my knees in church asking to be forgiven for the sin of gluttony.
Mark Leslie
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
The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you’re hungry again.
George Miller
I grew up in Italy, and our country is a country of great agriculture and food produce. It wasn’t like I was urban and only knew about high-heeled shoes and purses and never knew where my eggs came from.
Isabella Rossellini
If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant?
Martin Scorsese
I once went to Alba, Italy, during their white truffle festival, and I was like, ‘Just leave me here!
Amber Valletta
Quotes on the Italian way of life
There must be something in their water (or most likely their food) that has made the lifestyle of Italians into such an object of desire for so many people. These quotes about Italy might help us understand why exactly that is.
All of my youth growing up in my Italian family was focused around the table. That’s where I learned about love.
Leo Buscaglia
This quote reminds me of an interview with Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini, who, when asked whether Italian food was the best in the world, replied along the lines of “Every culture will claim their own cuisine is the best in the world. All I can say is that food ranks unusually high in the values scale of Italians.” Insightful!
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’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
The Italians have long known what makes a livable town or city.
Norman Foster
Italians know that what matters is style, not fashion. Italian style does not have social or age boundaries.
Stefano Gabbana
Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.
Alexander Herzen
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
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
Italy is the last country where people savor the joy of living. It makes us believe it even when Italy herself has ceased to believe.
Roger Peyrefitte
“Italy & Me” quotes
Some of our favorite artists and celebs tell us why Italy is special to them with these memorable statements.
Every one of my buildings begins with an Italian journey.
Alvar Aalto
I’m definitely looking forward to the day when I stop working – if I ever stop working. I like the idea of keeling over in my tomato veins in Sardinia or Northern Italy.
Anthony Bourdain
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 do quite like sightseeing; I like churches, museums, galleries and all that stuff. Also I love the smell of a church in Italy or the smell of an old greasy spoon somewhere and I like markets and little funny shops in the backstreets of Florence.
Ashley Jensen
I love the Italian way of life. I love the food; and I love the people.
Elton John
For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery.
D. H. Lawrence
I find 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
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
I think I feel automatically at home in Italy.
Boyd Rice
How beautiful is sunset when the glow / Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, / Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I believe that every man has two homelands; one is his personal, closer, and the other: Italy.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Funny quotes about Italy
Witty observers are quick to realize how peculiar the whole Italian world is. Comparisons with the country’s neighbors and comments on the unique pace of Italians make for easy humorous quotes about Italy.
Nothing except time is wasted in Italy.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building after seeing Italy.
Fanny Burney
It’s easy to understand why the most beautiful poems about England in the spring were written by poets living in Italy at the time.
Philip Dunne
I like France, where everybody thinks he’s Napoleon — down here everybody thinks he’s Christ.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
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
France exists so that you can drive to Italy.
James May
This quote illustrates one of the most comical aspects of Italian culture: the rivalry with France. Some Italians will even insist on how the French aren’t really that good at cooking or winemaking… they’re just better at self-promotion!
Wasting time is something that people do or feel all over the world, not just in Italy.
Paolo Sorrentino
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!
Orson Welles
Italy quotes by literary geniuses
Check out these quotes about Italy to learn how beloved writers have praised the country both in prose and verse.
With all its sinful doings, I must say, / That Italy’s a pleasant place to me, / Who love to see the Sun shine every day, / And vines (not nail’d to walls) from tree to tree.
Lord Byron
That which at twilight had appeared to be a silvery sea-god’s palace, a structure of twisted sea-shapes, was now a temple built by the cunning genies of Fire.
Gabriele D’Annunzio
This is Italy, land sacred to the Gods.
Pliny the Elder
Report of fashions in proud Italy, / Whose manners still our apish nation / Limps after in base imitation.
William Shakespeare
Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things.
Stendhal
We are all pilgrims who seek Italy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I’m sure this list of quotes about Italy either brought back fond memories or made you feel like creating your own memories of a trip to the Bel Paese. In the meantime, though, take a look at our article with the most inspiring quotes about Rome and Venice.
Leave a Reply