Italian cooking and its rituals get UN designation as world heritage

ROME (AP) — Italian food is known and loved around the world for its fresh ingredients and palate-pleasing tastes. The U.N.'s cultural agency gave foodies on Wednesday another reason to celebrate their pizza, pasta and tiramisu by listing Italian cooking as part of the world’s “intangible” cultural heritage.

UNESCO added the rituals surrounding Italian food preparation and consumption to its list of the world’s traditional practices and expressions. It's a designation celebrated alongside the more well-known UNESCO list of World Heritage sites, on which Italy is well represented with locations like Rome's Colosseum and the ancient city of Pompeii.

The citation didn’t mention specific dishes, recipes or regional specialties, but highlighted the cultural importance Italians place on the rituals of cooking and eating: the Sunday family lunch, the tradition of grandmothers teaching grandchildren how to fold tortellini dough just so, even the act of coming together to share a meal.

“Cooking is a gesture of love, a way in which we tell something about ourselves to others and how we take care of others,” said Pier Luigi Petrillo, a member of the Italian UNESCO campaign and professor of comparative law at Rome’s La Sapienza University.

“This tradition of being at the table, of stopping for a while at lunch, a bit longer at dinner, and even longer for big occasions, it’s not very common around the world,” he said.

Premier Giorgia Meloni celebrated the designation, which she said honored Italians and their national identity.

“Because for us Italians, cuisine is not just food or a collection of recipes. It is much more: it is culture, tradition, work, wealth,” she said in a statement.

It’s by no means the first time a country’s cuisine has been recognized as a cultural expression: In 2010, UNESCO listed the “gastronomic meal of the French” as part of the world’s intangible heritage, highlighting the French custom of celebrating important moments with food.

Other national cuisines and cultural practices surrounding them have also been added in recent years: the “cider culture” of Spain’s Asturian region, the Ceebu Jen culinary tradition of Senegal, the traditional way of making cheese in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

UNESCO meets every year to consider adding new candidates to its lists of “intangible heritage.” There are three types: One is a representative list, another lists practices that are in “urgent” need of safeguarding and the third is a list of good safeguarding practices.

This year, the committee meeting in New Delhi considered 53 nominations for the representative list, which already had 788 items. Other nominees included the Swiss yodelling, the handloom weaving technique used to make Bangladesh’s Tangail sarees, and Chile’s family circuses.

In its submission, Italy emphasized the “sustainability and biocultural diversity” of its food. Its campaign noted how Italy’s simple cuisine valued seasonality, fresh produce and limiting waste, while its variety highlighted its regional culinary differences and influences from migrants and others.

“For me, Italian cuisine is the best, top of the range. Number one. Nothing comes close,” said Francesco Lenzi, a pasta maker at Rome’s Osteria da Fortunata restaurant, near the Piazza Navona. “There are people who say ‘No, spaghetti comes from China.’ Okay, fine, but here we have turned noodles into a global phenomenon. Today, wherever you go in the world, everyone knows the word spaghetti. Everyone knows pizza.”

Lenzi credited his passion to his grandmother, the “queen of this big house by the sea” in Camogli, a small village on the Ligurian coast where he grew up. “I remember that on Sundays she would make ravioli with a rolling pin.”

“This stayed with me for many years,” he said in the restaurant's kitchen.

Mirella Pozzoli, a tourist visiting Rome’s Pantheon from the Lombardy region in northern Italy, said the mere act of dining together was special to Italians:

“Sitting at the table with family or friends is something that we Italians cherish and care about deeply. It’s a tradition of conviviality that you won’t find anywhere else in the world.”

Italy already has 13 other cultural items on the UNESCO intangible list, including Sicilian puppet theatre, Cremona’s violin craftsmanship and the practice of moving livestock along seasonal migratory routes known as transhumance.

Italy appeared in two previous food-related listings: a 2013 citation for the “Mediterranean diet” that included Italy and half a dozen other countries, and the 2017 recognition of Naples’ pizza makers.

Petrillo, the Italian campaign member, said after 2017, the number of accredited schools to train Neapolitan pizza makers increased by more than 400%.

“After the UNESCO recognition, there were significant economic effects, both on tourism and the sales of products and on education and training,” he said.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Italian cook Massimo Dante prepares a Carbonara at his restaurant in Rome, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Customers enjoy their pasta at a restaurant in Rome, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Customers enjoy their pasta at a restaurant in Rome, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Italian cook Massimo Dante prepares a Carbonara at his restaurant in Rome, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Customers enjoy their pasta at a restaurant in Rome, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE -Eugenio Iorio bakes a pizza at a restaurant in Naples, Italy, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado 's daughter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her mother's behalf Wednesday, hours after officials said Machado would miss the ceremony.

Machado has been in hiding and has not been seen in public since Jan. 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in a protest in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, told the award ceremony that “María Corina Machado has done everything in her power to be able to attend the ceremony here today — a journey in a situation of extreme danger.”

“Although she will not be able to reach this ceremony and today's events, we are profoundly happy to confirm that she is safe, and that she will be with us here in Oslo,” he said to applause.

The director of the Norwegian Nobel institute and Machado's spokesperson said earlier Wednesday that she wouldn't be able to attend the ceremony. Her daughter Ana Corina Sosa did instead.

María Corina Machado said in an audio recording of a phone call published on the Nobel website that many people had “risked their lives” for her to arrive in Oslo.

“I am very grateful to them, and this is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people,” she said before indicating she was about to board a plane.

“I know that there are hundreds of Venezuelans from different parts of the world that were able to reach your city that are right now in Oslo, family, my team, so many colleagues,” Machado added.

“And since this is a prize for all Venezuelans, I believe that it will be received by them. And as soon as I arrive, I will be able to embrace all my family and my children that I’ve have not seen for two years and so many Venezuelans, Norwegians that I know that share our struggle and our fight.”

Prominent Latin American figures attended Wednesday in a signal of solidarity with Machado, including Argentine President Javier Milei, Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa, Panama's President José Raúl Mulino and Paraguayan President Santiago Peña.

The 58-year-old’s win for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her South American nation was announced on Oct. 10, and she was described as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”

Machado won an opposition primary election and intended to challenge President Nicolás Maduro in last year’s presidential election, but the government barred her from running for office. Retired diplomat Edmundo González took her place.

The lead-up to the July 28, 2024, election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations. That increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared the incumbent the winner.

González, who sought asylum in Spain last year after a Venezuelan court issued a warrant for his arrest, attended Wednesday's ceremony, which was overlooked by a large portrait of Machado.

U.N. human rights officials and many independent rights groups have expressed concerns about the situation in Venezuela, and called for Maduro to be held accountable for the crackdown on dissent.

Five past Nobel Peace Prize laureates were detained or imprisoned at the time of the award, according to the prize's official website, most recently Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi in 2023 and Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski in 2022.

The others were Liu Xiaobo of China in 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar in 1991 and Carl von Ossietzky of Germany in 1935.

Gustavo Tovar-Arroyo, a Venezuelan human rights activist who was forced to flee into exile in 2012, said Machado's supporters “did the best for her to be here as she deserves. But we knew the risk.”

He added that they are “disappointed that she cannot be in the ceremony, but this is part of what we do when we fight against a dictatorship, a tyranny or a criminal regime. So we are used to it."

Argentine's President Javier Milei arrives at Oslo City Hall before the award ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize, in Oslo, Norway, Wednesday Dec. 10, 2025. (Ole Berg-Rusten/NTB Scanpix via AP)

The daughter of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ana Corina Sosa, who will accept the award on behalf of her mother, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, arrives for the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony, in Oslo, Norway, Wednesday Dec. 10, 2025. (Ole Berg-Rusten/NTB Scanpix, Pool via AP)

A picture of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado during the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony at Oslo City Hall, in Oslo, Norway, Wednesday Dec. 10, 2025. (Ole Berg-Rusten/NTB Scanpix, Pool via AP)

Ana Corina Sosa, center, daughter of Nobel peace prize laureate Maria Machados, arrives at the Grand Hotel in Oslo on Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (Lise Aserud/NTB via AP)

FILE - Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado greets supporters during a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the day before his inauguration for a third term in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, file)

From left: Colombia's former vice president Marta Lucía Ramírez, Pedro Urruchurtu Noselli and Magalli Meda, who are collaborators with the Nobel Prize winner, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, are seen at the Grand Hotel in Oslo, Tuesday Dec. 9, 2025. (Cornelius Poppe/NTB Scanpix via AP)

FILE - Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado displays vote tally sheets during a protest against the reelection of President Nicolas Maduro one month after the disputed presidential vote which she says the opposition won by a landslide, in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, file)