culture:

Italian culture is steeped in the arts, family, architecture, music, and food. Home of the
Roman Empire and its legendary figures such as Julius Caesar and Nero, it was also a
major center of the Renaissance and the birthplace of fascism under Benito Mussolini.

The major religion in Italy is Roman Catholicism. This is not surprising, as Vatican City,
located in the heart of Rome, is the hub of Roman Catholicism and where the Pope
resides. Roman Catholics and other Christians make up 80 percent of the population,
though only one-third of those are practicing Catholics. The country also has a growing
Muslim immigrant community, according to the University of Michigan. Muslims,
agnostics, and atheists make up the other 20 percent of the population, according to the
Central Intelligence Agency.

The number of Italians who attend religious services at least once a week has declined
substantially from 2006 to 2020, according to Statista (opens in new tab). A little over 18
million Italians aged six and older attended weekly services in 2006, down to 12 million
by 2020.

Art and architecture in Italy:

Italy has given rise to several architectural styles, including classical Roman,
Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical. Italy is home to some of the most famous
structures in the world, including the Colosseum and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The
concept of a basilica — which was initially 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 (opens in new tab), is derived from Latin and means
"royal palace." The word is also from the Greek basilikē, which is the feminine of
Vasilikos which means "royal" or basileus, which means "king."

Italy is also home to many castles, such as the Valle d'Aosta Fort Bard, the Verrès
Castle, and the Ussel Castle.

Florence, Venice, and Rome are home to many museums, but art can be viewed in
churches and public buildings. Most notable is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of the
Vatican, painted by Michelangelo sometime between 1508 and 1512.

Italy has a "centuries-long operatic tradition," according to Carolyn Abbate and Roger
Parker in "A History of Opera: The Last Four Hundred Years (opens in new tab)" (W. W.
Norton & Company, 2015). Opera has its roots in Italy and many famous operas —
including "Aida" and "La Traviata," 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.
 Julius Caesar: Julius Caesar was a Roman general and politician who named himself
dictator of the Roman Empire, a rule that lasted less than one year before he was
famously assassinated by political rivals in 44 B.C. Caesar was born on July 12 or 13 in
100 B.C. to a noble family.

Nero: Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus

Germanicus, was the fifth Roman emperor and final emperor of the Julio-Claudian
dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until he died in AD 68. He was adopted by the Roman
emperor Claudius at 13 and succeeded him on the throne.
 Benito Mussolini was an Italian political leader who
became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945. Originally a revolutionary
socialist, he forged the paramilitary fascist movement in 1919 and became prime
minister in 1922.

Italian food:
Italian cuisine has influenced food culture around the world and is viewed as a form of
art by many. Wine, cheese, and pasta are important parts of Italian meals. Pasta comes
in a wide range of shapes, widths, and lengths, including common forms such as penne,
spaghetti, linguine, fusilli, and lasagna.

For Italians, food isn't just nourishment, it is life. "Family gatherings are frequent and
often centered around food and the extended networks of families," said Wagner.
No one area of Italy eats the same things as the next. Each region has its spin on
"Italian food," according to CNN (opens in new tab). For example, most of the foods that
Americans view as Italian, such as pizza, come from central Italy. In the North of Italy,
fish, potatoes, rice, sausages, pork, and different types of cheeses are the most
common ingredients. Pasta dishes with tomatoes are popular, as are many kinds of
stuffed pasta, polenta, and risotto. In the South, tomatoes dominate dishes, and they
are either served fresh or cooked into sauce. Southern cuisine also includes capers,
peppers, olives and olive oil, garlic, artichokes, eggplant, and ricotta cheese.

Wine is also a big part of Italian culture, and the country is home to some of the world's
most famous vineyards. The oldest traces of Italian wine were 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 a product in an archaeological context in Sicily,"
researchers wrote in the study, published online August 2017 in the Microchemical
Journal (opens in new tab).

Italian festivals:
Italians celebrate most Christian holidays. The celebration of the Epiphany celebrated
on January 6, is much like Christmas. Befana, 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 flowers.

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.

April 25 is Liberation Day, marking the 1945 liberation ending of World War II in Italy
1945.

Family life in Italy:

"Family is an extremely important value within the Italian culture," 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.

The family structure has changed somewhat over the last 60 years. Gian Carlo
Blangiardo, professor of Statistics and Quantitative Methods at the University of
Milano-Bicocca, and Stefania Rimoldi, a researcher in demography at the University of
Milano-Bicocca, explained in "Portraits of the Italian Family: Past, Present, and Future
(opens in new tab)" for the "Journal of Comparative Family Studies Vol. 45" (University
of Toronto Press, 2014)that the mean age of marriage is now 31 for women and 34 for
men, seven years older than it was in 1975. This has been linked to an increase in
cohabitation before marriage and an overall decline in the number of marriages.
 Language in Italy:

Italian is the official language of Italy, and 93% of the population are native Italian
speakers.

Around 50% of the population speak a regional dialect as their mother tongue. Many
dialects are mutually unintelligible and thus considered by linguists as separate
languages, but are not officially recognized.

Friulian, one of these dialects, is spoken by 600,000 people in the northeast of Italy,
which is 1% of the entire population. Other northern minority languages include Ladin,
Slovene, German, which enjoys equal recognition with Italian in the province of
Alto-Adige, and French, which is legally recognized in the Alpine region of the Val
d'Aosta.

Albanian is spoken by 0.2% of the population, mainly in the southern part of Italy, as are
Croatian and Greek.

Catalan is spoken in one city, Alghero, on the island of Sardinia, by around 0.07% of the
population. On the rest of the island, Sardinian is spoken by over 1m, which comes to
1.7% of the Italian population.