Italian Culture and Traditions
Italy is home to more than 60.2 million
individuals as of January 2020 and is ranked 23rd in population size when
compared with other countries throughout the world. Italy population is equivalent to 0.78% of the total world
population. Italian culture is steeped in the arts music, family,
architecture, and food. Home of the Roman Empire and a major center of the
Renaissance, culture on the Italian peninsula has flourished for centuries.
Here is a brief overview of the Italian customs and traditions.
Population of Italy
About 96% of the
population of the Italy is Italian, though there are many other ethnicities
from all over the world that live in this country. North African Arab, Albanian,
Italo-Albanian, German, Austrian and some other European groups fill out the
remainder of the population of the Italy. Bordering countries of France, Austria,
Switzerland, and Slovenia to the north have influenced Italian culture, as have
the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia and Sicily and Sardinia.
Languages spoken in Italy
Family life in Italy
"Within
the Italian Culture Family is an extremely important value," Talia Wagner,
a Los Angeles-based marriage and family therapist, told Live Science. Their
family solidarity is focused on extended family rather than the West's idea of
"the nuclear family" of just a mom, dad and kids, Wagner explained.
Italians
have frequent family gatherings and enjoy spending time with those in their
family. "Children are reared to remain close to the family upon adulthood
and incorporate their future family into the larger network," said Wagner.
Religion
in Italy
Roman Catholicism is the major
religion in the Italy. This is not surprising, as Vatican City, located in the
heart of the Rome, is the hub of Roman Catholicism and where the Pope resides.
Roman Catholics and other Christians make up 80% of the population in the
country, though only one-third of those population are practicing Catholics.
The Italian country also has a growing Muslim immigrant community, according to
the University of Michigan. Muslim, atheist and agnostic make
up the other 20% of the Italian population, according to the Central
Intelligence Agency.
Art and Architecture in Italy
Architecture
Italy is known best in the
world because it has given rise to a number of architectural styles, including
classical Roman, Baroque, Renaissance, and Neoclassical. Italy is the home to
some of the most famous structures in the whole world, including the Leaning
Tower of Pisa and the Colosseum. The concept of a basilica — which was
originally used to describe an open public court building and evolved to mean a
Catholic pilgrimage site — was born in Italy. The word, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is derived from Latin and meant
"royal palace." The word is also from the Greek basilikē, which
is the feminine of basilikos which means "royal" or basileus, which
means "king."
Italy also is home to many castles and there are many large castles in the Italy, such as the
Valle d'Aosta Fort Bard, the Ussel Castle and the Verrès Castle.
Florence, Rome and Venice are home to many museums, but the art
can be viewed in public buildings and in the churches. Most notable is the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of
the Vatican, painted by the Michelangelo sometime between 1508 and 1512.
Opera
has its roots in the country of Italy and many famous operas — including
"La Traviata," and "Aida" both by Giuseppe Verdi, and
"Pagliacci" by Ruggero Leoncavallo — were written in Italian and are
still performed in the native language. More recently, Italian tenor Luciano
Pavarotti made opera more accessible to the masses as a soloist and as part of
the Three Tenors.
Italy
is also a home to a number of world-renowned fashion houses, including Armani,
Benetton, Gucci, Versace and Prada.
Italian
cuisine
Italian
cuisine (food) has influenced food culture around the world and is viewed as a
form of art by many. If we talk about the Italian meals then there are Wine,
cheese and pasta are important part of Italian meals. Pasta comes in a wide
range of shapes, widths and lengths, including penne, linguine, spaghetti,
fusilli and lasagna.
For
Italian people, food isn't just nourishment, it is considered as life.
"Family gatherings are frequent and often centered around food and the
extended networks of the families," said Wagner.
No one area of Italy eats the
same things in meals as the next. Each region of the Italy has its own spin on
the "Italian food," according to CNN. For
example, most of the foods that Americans view as Italian, such as pizza and
spaghetti, come from the central Italy. In the North of Italy, rice, fish,
potatoes, sausages, pork and different types of cheeses are the most common
ingredients. Pasta dishes with the tomatoes are popular in Italian meals, as
are many kinds of stuffed pasta, risotto and polenta. In the South, tomatoes
dominate dishes, and they are either served fresh or cooked into sauce.
Southern cuisine also includes capers, olives, peppers, olive oil, garlic,
artichokes, eggplant and ricotta cheese.
Wine is also a very big part of the Italian culture, and the
country is considered as the home to some of the world's most famous vineyards.
The oldest traces of Italian wine were
recently discovered in a cave near Sicily's southwest coast. "The
archaeological implications of this new data are enormous, especially
considering that the identification of wine [is] the first and
earliest-attested presence of such product in an archaeological context in
Sicily," researchers wrote in the study, published online August 2017 in
the Microchemical Journal.
Doing business in Italy
Euro
is the Italy's official currency. Italians are known for their family-centric
culture, and there are a number of small and mid-sized businesses within the
country. Even many of the larger companies such as Benetton and Fiat are still
primarily controlled by single families. "Many families that are migrated
from Italy are traditionalists by nature, with the parents holding traditional
gender roles. This has become challenging for the younger generations, as
gender roles have morphed in the American culture and today stand at odds with
the father being the primary breadwinner and the undisputed head of the
household and the mother being the primary caretaker of the home and
children," said Wagner.
In
Italy Meetings are typically less formal than in countries such as Germany and
Russia, and the familial structure can give way to a bit of chaos and animated
exchanges. With a bit of wariness Italian business people tend to view
information from outsiders and prefer verbal exchanges with people that they
know well.
Italian holidays
Mostly
Italians celebrate Christian holidays. The celebration of the Epiphany, that is
the celebrated on January 6, is much like Christmas. Belfana, an old lady who
flies on her broomstick, delivers presents and goodies to good children,
according to legend.
Pasquetta,
on the Monday after Easter, typically involves family picnics to mark the
beginning of springtime.
November 1 commemorates Saints Day, a religious holiday during which Italians typically decorate
the graves of deceased relatives with the flowers.
April 25 is the Liberation Day,
marking the 1945 liberation ending World War II in Italy in 1945.Many Italian
towns and villages celebrate the feast day of their patron saint. September 19,
for example, is the feast of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Napoli.
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