Italian Cuisine Added to UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage: Why This 2025 Decision Matters
- The Chef & The Dish
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Why UNESCO Added Italian Cuisine to the Intangible Cultural Heritage List
On December 10, 2025 food history was made. UNESCO’s recognition places Italian cuisine in the category of living heritage — cultural practices that embody identity, craftsmanship, memory, and community. Italian cooking is not defined solely by recipes, it's defined by the traditions, values, and techniques passed down through generations.
This includes everything from small-scale farming and artisanal food production to rituals around Sunday meals, harvest festivals, and regional specialties that have survived for centuries.
Protection for future generations
Being listed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage helps ensure that these traditions, so often threatened by industrialization, homogenization, and commercialization, are preserved. This UNESCO designation acknowledges that real Italian cuisine is rooted in respect for ingredients, sustainable agriculture, community and family, historical continuity and regional diversity. These principles are the foundation of the authentic cooking we strive to preserve in every class we teach.
Why Italian Cuisine Is Considered a World Cultural Treasure
Italian cooking is considered the world's food. But what is it that makes Italian the first choice of cuisine for so many? There are so many reasons, but to name a few...
Simplicity and purity of ingredients
Italian cuisine celebrates what grows from the earth: sun-ripened tomatoes, fragrant basil, delicate olive oil, fresh cheeses, seafood, grains, and seasonal vegetables. Its magic lies not in complexity, but in the pure quality of each ingredient.
Deep connection to the land
From volcanic soils in the south to Alpine pastures in the north, Italy’s rich agricultural landscape shapes every bite. Italian farmers and artisans maintain practices rooted in respect for the land, sustainability, and biodiversity. This connection between soil and soul is part of what UNESCO recognized, and part of what inspires our classes taught directly by Italian chefs who grew up cooking within these traditions.
Regional identity
Every region, often every village, has its own culinary expressions: Cacio e pepe from Rome, Pasta alla Norma from Sicily, Risotto from the north, Amatriciana from Amatrice, Focaccia from Liguria…and countless more. This diversity is one of the defining features of UNESCO-listed Italian cuisine.
Warmth, comfort, and community
But perhaps the most important of all, Italian food is deeply emotional. It’s the aroma of simmering sauces, the sound of a table set for friends, the feeling of belonging. It is both nourishing and generous, a cuisine meant to be shared. It's a hug from a nonna. It's why people around the world want to learn to cook like and cook with an Italian.
Generations Cooking Together: The Heart of Italian Culinary Tradition
One reason UNESCO honored Italian cuisine is its intergenerational and communal nature. Italian kitchens are places where grandparents teach grandchildren how to fold ravioli, cousins gather to roll gnocchi, and whole families unite to prepare meals during holidays and festivals. Cooking is collaboration. Cooking is storytelling. Cooking is how identity is passed from one generation to the next. This is one of the most meaningful traditions we preserve through our cooking classes. When our guests learn from chefs, joining them live from Italy, they are learning from an Italian local in real time, from real family kitchens. They're participating in this lineage. They're learning the technique, yes, but also the values and stories behind it.
Italian Cuisine’s Deep Connection to the Land and Agriculture
Italian cuisine cannot be separated from the land that produces it. Its simplicity is born of fertile soil, the Mediterranean climate, sustainable farming traditions, reverence for seasonal ingredients and of course the incredible artisans who treat food production as heritage, not industry. From olive oil mills to vineyards to wheat fields, Italy’s agricultural identity is inseparable from its culinary identity. This is one reason that every Italian cooking class we offer be taught only by chefs who live and work in Italy. Just as our Mexican cooking classes are taught by our chefs in Mexico, and our Spanish cooking classes are taught by our chefs in Spain. Locals understand this relationship between land and food. Our Italian chefs cook within the rhythm of Italian seasons. They teach dishes as they were meant to be taught — with authenticity rooted in place. They teach by seasonality because, that is their culture. It's beautiful.
Learn UNESCO-Recognized Italian Dishes From Chefs Joining You Live from Italy
As the world celebrates this UNESCO designation, we are reminded more than ever why sharing authentic culinary traditions matters. When The Chef & The Dish opened its doors in 2016, we had one goal: To honor world cultures by teaching their cuisines only through the people who carry those traditions in their bones. With chefs who live and breathe the recipes and stories that we can share worldwide. That’s why our Italian cooking classes are taught live by chefs right in Italy, chefs who grew up with these dishes, shaped by the land, the seasons, and the rituals UNESCO has now officially recognized as world heritage.
In our Italian cooking classes you can learn iconic dishes including the classics, ravioli, gnocchi, focaccia, cacio e pepe, homemade pasta, carbonara, gnudi, amatriciana, puttanesca, pasta alla norma, risotto, saltimbocca, ossobucco, tiramisu... but we also teach lesser known dishes that shape the country like pasta all'assassina, torta barozzi, Every class is an opportunity to preserve culture, honor authenticity, and understand the “real Italy” through the people who live it every day.
A UNESCO Moment for the World, and a Call to Continue the Tradition
The inscription of Italian cuisine as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage is a celebration of humanity’s shared heritage. It honors the farmers, artisans, home cooks, chefs, families, and communities who shaped a cuisine that belongs not only to Italy, but to the world. And now, more than ever, it's a reminder that these traditions must be protected, taught, and passed on with respect. We're proud to play a small role in this effort, not by reinventing the world's cuisines, but by safeguarding them, teaching them authentically, and sharing it the way UNESCO intends: as living cultural heritage.
To cook food is to touch history. To learn it from those who live it is to keep that history alive.
ABOUT THE CHEF & THE DISH
The Chef & The Dish has chefs around the world that you video conference into your kitchen for a private 1:1 virtual cooking class. Learn how to make pasta with a chef video calling you live from Italy, Pad Thai with a chef virtually in your kitchen live from Thailand. Together you cook, share stories, laugh and make a multi course meal together. Rated 'Best Date Night,' 'Best Gifts,' and "Best Cooking Classes" by WSJ, Forbes, Vanity Fair, Martha Stewart, Rolling Stone and tens more. Transport your kitchen for the day.™
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