Italy: 12 Fun Facts about Italian History, Traditions and Cuisine

Italy – incredible European country, which attracts visitors with diverse tastes: superb fashion shows, world’s best resorts, exciting travel destinations, delicious cuisine, which reaches far beyond pizza and pasta, and finally, citizens with unusual but fun traditions and outlook on like.

The regions of Italy are unique and have their own charm, so even visiting several of them (20 in total), one won’t be able to stay that he/she knows everything about Italy.

The more you explore Italy, the more interesting things you find about Italy’s life, cuisine, traditions, ideals, language and culture.

In this interactive video presentation of facts for kids and adults we have reviewed such unusual things about the country:

- country’s tourism activity ;

- the best universities in Europe – in Bologna and La Sapienza in Rome;

- record truffle find;

- what is pre-dinner passeggiata;

- history of national flag;

- the history of pasta;

- the first pizzeria in Ancient Rome;

- Colosseum – biggest ancient entertainment building;

- meaning of the most popular Italian surname;

- new uses for insanely fast Lamborghinis.

[Datacube]

UPDATE: Please note that there have been a mistake in the fact about the Italian tourism. The statement should be as follows: The service sector sector provides up to 70% of the national income in Italy and the tourism itself generates ~10% of the GDP in Italy.

[Datacube]

What is your favorite thing about Italy?

[TheYves]

Proud university student here from Rome La sapienza! The largest university in Europe! :)

[KajiRider]

Before Roman times Pasta came from two traditional sources. 1 Etruscan Testaroli still eaten to this day and 2 Greek Lagana which was a type of pasta used as containers to preserve food and leftovers which later evolved in to lasagne.

[reddinareddika]

Actually, the italian flag does not come from French inspiration, but from a piece of the Divina Commedia where Beatrix appears to Dante wearing a green mantle, a white veil and a red dress. In this order. That dress represented Faith, Hope and Charity, and had nothing to do with landscapes. After the unification, Italy was so divided by thousands of years of culture differences that they had to choose a model that could unify them all. They chose Dante Alighieri because it is considered the greatest of all the italian authors, and that is what the biggest part of italian culture comes from.

[matteolorenzogirardelli]

I didn't know that mafia was a fun fact for you

[Hanniballo]

Italy, the world's most popular country

[alexcampanella]

i'm italian and for me The colora of flag is: Green The earth, The White The Snow of alps and red The Blood of war for italy

[SoulF]

Italy is one of the most industrialized country in the world, the 8 biggest economy of the planet, its a member of g7, its impossible that tourism has such income in Italy gdp, that is 2100 billions, the third in the eurozone afer France and Germany, the income from tourism would be less than 10% of its gdp

[DavideBalzan]

We also say that one of the most representive rapresentation about our flag is that represent Pizza: green is the basil, white is the mozzarella and red is the tomato.

But i guess as italian is just a way of say..

[naryma]

3:52 What about the Circus Maximus in Rome - had about 3 times the capacity of the Colloseum.

[laviniadellacqua]

it's not true that there is a lot of mafia in italy obviously there is some mafia but non a lot. and mafia is everywhere even in the us

[AquilaIrreale]

Probabily a young central/southern italian male can eat as much as 50Kg a year or even more, at least according to my own experience.
(180g a meal, once a day, five days a week, and this are safe base values, many eat it every day, sometimes twice :'D)

[smo]

Actually risotto and polenta aren't more popular than the pasta in the north

[Eurodance_Groove]

3:00... THE SECOND FLAG COLOURS' INTERPRETATION IS THE UNIQUE AND CORRECT ONE !!!

[franco]

I'm italian and I didn't know half of these facts!

[docbob]

63% of italian GDP? WRONG! it's about 10-15%. It's TRUE to say that Italy have the 63% of world heritage sites....

[the_one_voice]

Actually, in Italy, the word "mafia" refers only to the specific kind of criminal associations which act (or have their centers of power) in Sicily, and mainly to "cosa nostra", while in other regions different - even though fundamentally similar - kinds of criminal associations have different denominations, as "'ndrangheta", "camorra", etc. As for "godfathers", it doesn't exist at all: each of the named associations has a different way to call their "leaders", like "capo cosca", "capo clan", "reggente", etc.

[ary]

that university pic, at 3:22. i'm 100% sure it's not bologna... but cool!

[asevado]

Tourism in Italy provides about 10% of national income. Not even close to 63%. Where did you get this data?