100+ Magical Italy Quotes (for Perfect Instagram Captions + Inspiration)

Italy is one of those places that is hard not to love – it has captured the hearts of countless people, who are mesmerized by its beauty, history, and culture. There has been plenty that has been said and written about the country and its cities over the years, and there is no shortage of inspiring Italy quotes.

Italy is one of those dream destinations that has it all – whether it’s the ancient history of Rome, the Renaissance art and architecture of Florence, the wonderful canals of Venice, or the breathtaking blue waters along its coast. There are plenty of quotes that capture the unique magic of each of these places (which will immediately make you want to book a plane ticket there!).

Perhaps you are looking for some quotes about Italy that talk about the culture and la dolce vita, or the amazing food (because how can you say no pasta and pizza?!). Or perhaps you are looking for the perfect Italy caption for those beautiful photos from your trip (because Italy is also one of the most photogenic countries in the world).

Here are over 100 magical Italy quotes that are sure to inspire your next trip!

Famous Italy Quotes

Many famous writers, poets, politicians, scholars and composers have also become captivated by Italy over the years. Here are some of the most famous Italy quotes from these figures:

“You may have the universe if I may have Italy.” – Giuseppe Verdi

“For sure, in Italy, the sun always shines.” – Aleksandar Mitrovic

 “The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.” – Mary Shelley

“In America, one must be something, but in Italy one can simply be.” – Pietros Maneos

“Italy and the spring and the first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.” – Bertrand Russell

“The Creator made Italy from designs by Michaelangelo.” – Mark Twain

“When life gives you twists and turns, Chique Yourself Up in Italy!” – Barbara Conelli

“One doesn’t come to Italy for niceness,” was the retort; “one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!” – E.M. Forster

“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

“All my ego wants is to be sitting by a lake in Italy. It doesn’t want to be backstage, warming up.” – Chet Faker

“A man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see.” – Samuel Johnson

“Italy is a geographical expression.” – Klemens von Metternich

“Italy is my destiny; it calls to me to return home.” – Melissa Muldoon

“Italy offers one the most priceless of all one’s possessions – one’s own soul.” – Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

“One of the great joys of traveling through Italy is discovering firsthand that it is, indeed, a dream destination.” – Debra Levinson

“And I do believe that Italy really purifies and ennobles all who visit her. She is the school as well as the playground of the world.” – E. M. Forster

“Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building after seeing Italy.” – Fanny Burney

“Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.” – Anna Akhmatova

“Even now I miss Italy dearly, I dream about it every night.” – Eila Hiltunen

“A man has not fully lived until he experiences that gentle balmy climate of ancient empires, the land of lemon trees and the genius of Michelangelo.” 
– E.A. Bucchianeri

“I love the way Italy makes me feel like I’m home.” – Ilene Modica, Our Italian Journey

“…is there anywhere in the world as full of beauty as Italy?” – Natalia Sanmartín Fenollera, The Awakening of Miss Prim

“For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery.” – D.H. Lawrence

“Not much was really invented during the Renaissance, if you don’t count modern civilization.” – P. J. O’Rourke

“I was in Italy on vacation, and I saw my reflection in a mirror. I saw how unique my skin was and why people stop me on the street to ask about it. I started falling in love with it.” – Khoudia Diop

“How beautiful is sunset when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

“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 couldn’t settle in Italy – it was like living in a foreign country.” – Ian Rush

Quotes About Italian Culture

Passion. Fiats. Fashion. La dolce vita. These are some of the things that are ingrained within Italian culture – but there is so much more to it than that. Here are the best ideas for Italy captions that point out the things to love about Italians and their culture:

“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

“First of all, let’s get one thing straight. Your Italy and our Italia are not the same thing. Italy is a soft drug peddled in predictable packages, such as hills in the sunset, olive groves, lemon trees, white wine, and raven-haired girls. Italia, on the other hand, is a maze. It’s alluring, but complicated. It’s the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters, or in the course of ten minutes. Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis.” – Beppe Severgnini, La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind

“Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.”  – Alexander Herzen

“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 is a hot country. Wherever you feel heat, your excitement and passion come out. We’re hot-blooded, and where there’s passion there’s love, but also anger, hunger, excitement.” – Gino D’Acampo

“And that is … how they are. So terribly physically all over one another. They pour themselves one over the other like so much melted butter over parsnips. They catch each other under the chin, with a tender caress of the hand, and they smile with sunny melting tenderness into each other’s face.”
– D.H. Lawrence

“Italian culture is so deeply soaked in an appreciation of the good things in life.” – Mariska Hargitay

“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

“And don’t, let me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy’s only a museum of antiquities and art. Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvelous than the land” – E. M. Forster

“[Italy is] A country where pleasure principle dominates.” – Sari Gilbert

“Italy – I love the late-night culture, hanging around the square at midnight with everyone, catching up, and having a drink.” – Gemma Chan

“I love places that have an incredible history. I love the Italian way of life. I love the food. I love the people. I love the attitudes of Italians.” – Elton John

“Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts.” –  Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“Italians know that what matters is style, not fashion. Italian style does not have social or age boundaries.” – Stefano Gabbana

“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

“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 find that 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

“Il bel far niente means ‘the beauty of doing nothing’… [it] has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life’s achievement. You don’t necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Occasionally she dreams of Italy.  She dreams of cheese shops, persnickety Fiats, and very fine leather goods.” – Kate Spade

“Totally contrary to my genetic makeup, contrary to my usual behavior and preferences, contrary to all logic, I fell madly in love with Italy, its people and its chaos.” – Nancy Yuktonis Solak

“The Italians have their priorities right: They’re driven, they do their work, but they really enjoy the day-to-day and they don’t put off the enjoyment of the everyday for some future goal.” – Frances Mayes

Quotes About Italian Food

One of the best things about a trip to Italy is the food. Reading all these Italy quotes about food made me salivate and dream of my next trip back, so I can feast on all that pasta, pizza, and gelato! Here are all the best Italy captions about the food:

“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.” – Federico Fellini

“You know, people come to Italy for all sorts of reasons, but when they sat, it’s for the same two things.”
“What?”
“Love and gelato.”
– Jenna Evans Welch, Love & Gelato

“In Italy, they add work and life on to food and wine.” – Robin Leach

“I think people in Italy live their lives better than we do. It’s an older country, and they’ve learned to celebrate dinner and lunch, whereas we sort of eat as quickly as we can to get through it.” – George Clooney

“Everything you see I owe to pasta.” – Sophia Loren

“Italy will always have the best food.” – Diane von Furstenberg

“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

“As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.” – Mario Batali

“So… Italian gelato. Take the deliciousness of a regular ice-cream cone, times it by a million, then sprinkle it with crushed-up unicorn horns.” – Jenna Evans Welch, Love and Gelato

“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

“Watching Italians eat (especially men, I have to say) is a form of tourism the books don’t tell you about. They close their eyes, raise their eyebrows into accent marks, and make sounds of acute appreciation. It’s fairly sexy. Of course I don’t know how these men behave at home, if they help with the cooking or are vain and boorish and mistreat their wives. I realized Mediterranean cultures have their issues. Fine, don’t burst my bubble. I didn’t want to marry these guys, I just wanted to watch.” – Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

“I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Parla come magni,’ It means, ‘Speak the way you eat,’ or in my personal translation: ‘Say it like you eat it.’ It’s a reminder – when you’re making a big deal out of explaining something, when you’re searching for the right words – to keep your language as simple and direct as Roman rood. Don’t make a big production out of it. Just lay it on the table.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Italian food really reflects the people. It reflects like a prism that fragments into regions.” – Lidia Bastianich

Italy Captions For Rome

Ahh Rome. There’s just something about the Eternal City – it’s like a living museum, like seeing your history textbooks come alive in front of you. It’s such a magical feeling seeing Rome’s famous landmarks, some which are thousands of years old. Use these Italy captions for your photos from some of the most famous sights in Rome, whether it’s the Colosseum, the Forum, Trevi Fountain, the Vatican, or more.

“Rome is not like any other city. It’s a majestic museum, a living room to tiptoe through.” – Alberto Sordi

“Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning.”
– Giotto di Bondone

“Methinks I will not die quite happy without having seen something of that Rome.” – Sir Walter Scott

“To Rome, for everything.” – Miguel de Cervantes

“Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.” – Anotole Broyard

“Rome, the city of visible history.” – George Eliot

“Italy has changed. But Rome is Rome.” – Robert De Niro

“Rome lifts you up but won’t let you settle down – it turns you into a bird without a nest.” – Glenn Haybittle, Scorched Earth

 “You fall in love with Rome very slowly, little by little, but if it happens, it will be for a lifetime…” – Nikolaj Gogol

“Rome will exist as long as the Coliseum does; when the Coliseum falls, so will Rome; when Rome falls, so will the world.” – Venerable Bede

“If I’m in Rome for only 48 hours, I would consider it a sin against God to not eat cacio e pepe, the most uniquely Roman of pastas, in some crummy little joint where Romans eat. I’d much rather do that than go to the Vatican. That’s Rome to me.” – Anthony Bourdain

“Rome knew love, better than I ever could, so I let the city take her hand, and followed close behind, picking up the pieces of her melting heart.” – Atticus

“The thing I love about Rome is that is has so many layers. In it, you can follow anything that interests you: town planning, architecture, churches or culture. It’s a city rich in antiquity and early Christian treasures, and just endlessly fascinating. There’s nowhere else like it.” – Claire Tomalin

“She had always been fond of history, and here [in Rome] was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine.” – Henry James The Portrait of A Lady

Italy Quotes About Florence

Florence is one of the most beautiful and fascinating cities in Italy. As the birthplace of the Renaissance, there is incredible architecture and art around every corner. These Italy quotes about Florence make perfect captions for your photos from the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, Piazza Michelangelo, and more.

“To see the sun sink down, drowned on his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.” – Mark Twain

“Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.” – Henry James

“In Paris, you learn wit, in London you learn to crush your social rivals, and in Florence you learn poise.” – Virgil Thomson

“When I walk up the piazza of Santa Croce I feel as if it were not a Florentine nor an European church but a church built by and for the human race.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Tonight I watched the sun set at Ponte Vecchio. I think it’s safe to say I have finally found the place that feels right to me. I just can’t believe I had to come halfway across the world to find it.”- Jenna Evans Welch, Love & Gelato

“The very beginning of European aesthetics started from Florence. Everything here was beauty, money, and creativity, the power of the good money.”
– Alessandro Michele

“Through these old streets I wander dreamily; Around me Florence sweeps her busy tide of life.” – William Leighton

“Imagine a pair of woman’s lips, Mogor whispered, puckering for a kiss. That is the city of Florence, narrow at the edges, swelling at the center, with the Arno flowing through between, parting the two lips, the upper and the lower. The city is an enchantress. When it kisses you, you are lost, whether you be commoner or king.” – Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence

Italy Captions For Venice

Venice is one of the most mesmerizing cities in Italy – the city was built entirely on water, creating a unique network of canals. There is truly no other city in the world like Venice – and here are the best Italy quotes about Venice.

“Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.” – Truman Capote

“The surface of Venice is constantly metamorphosing, and painting Venice is almost like being a restorer, peeling off the layers to find the picture after picture underneath.” – Arbit Blatas

“It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.” – Erica Jong (on Venice)

“Venice, it’s temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

“All of Venice is tattered, resewn, achingly lovely, and like an enchantress, she disarms me, making off with the very breath of me.” – Marlena de Blasi

“This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.” – Thomas Mann

“Venice never quite seems real, but rather an ornate film set suspended on the water.” – Frida Giannini

“Venice is eternity itself.” – Joseph Brodsky

“All the cities in the world are, more or less, similar to one another. Venice is like no other.” – Carlo Goldoni

“It’s so easy for me to get caught up in the feeling of a city like Venice, where everything is just beautiful color and gorgeous buildings that are so peaceful. You can roam around and get lost in the labyrinth.” – Nanette Lepore

“If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you’ve imagined. Venice is – Venice is better.” – Fran Lebowitz

“A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.” – Arthur Symons

“Venice never quite seems real, but rather an ornate film set suspended on the water.” – Frida Giannini

“Nothing ever seems straightforward in Venice, least of all its romances.”
– Roger Ebert

Italy Quotes Other Cities and Regions in Italy

Of course, Italy is more than just Rome, Florence, and Venice. There are so many more incredible cities regions in Italy, whether its the sprawling wine region of Tuscany, the colorful seaside villages of Cinque Terre, the aquamarine waters of the Amalfi Coast, Sicily (Italy’s largest island), Naples (the birthplace of the pizza)…the list goes on. Here are some of the best Italy quotes about some of these other places in Italy not mentioned above.

“If bliss could be a color, today would be Amalfi Blue” – Lisa Fantino

“My favorite thing about Milan is that you see these guys, and it’s as if a spaceship came out of the most attractive planet invented and just dropped them off all across the city.” – Brad Goreski

“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

“Italy without Sicily leaves no image in the spirit. It is in Sicily that is the key to everything […] The purity of the contours, the softness of everything, the exchange of soft colors, the harmonious unity of the sky with the sea and the sea to the land…Who saw them once, shall possess them for a lifetime.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.” – John Steinbeck

“To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“They say that when Judgement day comes, the people of Amalfi will have no change in life, for they are already living in paradise…” – Melissa Hill, The Summer Villa

“Rome and New York were impressive, but they knew they were. They had the beauty of a vain woman who had squeezed herself into her favourite dress after hours of careful self-worship. There was a raw, feral beauty about this landscape that was totally unselfconscious but no less real…There was no pomp or vanity here; this was an innocent, natural beauty, the best kind, like a woman first thing in the morning, lit up by the sun streaming through a window, who doesn’t quite believe it when you tell her how beautiful she is.”
– Leonardo Donofrio (on Tuscany)

“Maybe money can’t buy happiness, but it can get you a nice little villa in Tuscany, and that’s close enough for me.” – Lois Greiman

“The Tuscan countryside whizzed by in a kaleidoscopic whirl of shapes and colors. Green grass and trees melded with blue sky, purple and yellow wildflowers, peachy-orange villas, brown-and-gray farmhouses, and the occasional red-and-white Autogrill, Italy’s (delicious) answer to fast food.”
– Jenny Nelson

“Tuscany is so full of history and beauty – you meet wonders of art and architecture on almost every corner. But I love the region’s homier aspects: the special sweetness of the tomatoes, the soft mozzarella, the heady scents of basil and garlic everywhere.” – Trudie Styler

What are some of your favorite Italy quotes?

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