Italy travel quotes that will make you want to go right now

Inspiring and interesting Italy quotes that will make you want to visit Italy right now

It is always fascinating to hear what others think of your country.

How they see it, what they associate it with, how much of it they understand, they love, they make their own. Also, sometimes, how much of it a casual visitor might miss, misunderstand or simplify.

Italy is one of the most visited countries in the world and visitors are generous of quotes and thoughts about it.

Some are lyrical, poetic and evocative, some are funny, some are so to the point it almost hurts.

In this article, I collected some I particularly enjoyed reading. I am sure you ill find more than one you will love too and will make you want to travel to Italy straight away.

Table of Contents

Inspiring quotes about Italy

I am going to open this article with my selection of general travel quotes about Italy by Italian and non Italian artists and thinkers.

My favorite is probably the one by Severgnini, not poetic maybe but, for me, a very accurate portrait of Italy and very much how I feel about the country – just expressed much better than I ever could!

You may have the universe if I may have Italy — Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer

Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building after seeing Italy. — F. Burney, English novelist

The Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo — Mark Twain, American writer.

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy –Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and writer

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, Italian writer

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, Italian Prime Minister

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

About falling in love with Italy

Many visitors fell in love with Italy and made it part of their souls. These are some of their feelings for il Bel Paese

Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life — Anna Akhmatova, Russian Poet

Even now I miss Italy dearly, I dream about it every night. — Eila Hiltunen, Finnish Sculptor

Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, “Italy.” – Robert Browning, English poet

I love the language, it sounds as if it should be written on satin with syllables which breathe of the sweet South. — Lord Byron, English Poet

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

How beautiful is sunset, when the glow of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy! — P. B. Shelley, English poet

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, American novelist

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, English essayist.

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, musician

I was offered a free villa in Hollywood, but I said no thank you, I prefer to live in Italy. – Ennio Morricone, Italian composer

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

We are all pilgrims who seek Italy — J. W. von Goethe, German writer

Italy quotes inspired by Rome

Rome is my home town and it feels my heart with joy to see the inspiration it gave to some of its most illustrious visitors.

To Rome, for everything – Miguel de Cervantes,Spanish author

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city – Anatole Broyard, American writer

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

Yes, I have finally arrived to this Capital of the World! I now see all the dreams of my youth coming to life… Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome. – J.W. von Goethe, German writer

Rome, the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar – George Eliot, English Novelist

If we could be reborn wherever we chose, how crowded Rome would be, populated by souls who had spent their previous lives longing to inhabit a villa on the Janiculum Hill — Francine Prose

I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble – Augustus, Roman Emperor

You can find more quotes about Rome here

A fool is one who admires other cities without visiting Rome – Francesco Petrarca, Italian poet

Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning – Giotto di Bondone, Italian artist

Italy has changed. But Rome is Rome – Robert De Niro, American actor

Methinks I will not die quite happy without having seen something of that Rome — Sir Walter Scott, English writer

Rome will exist as long as the Colosseum does. When the Colosseum falls, so will Rome; when Rome falls, so will the world. – Bede, English monk

Rome was mud and smoky skies; the rank smell of the Tiber and the exotically spiced cooking fires of a hundred different nationalities. Rome was white marble and gilding and heady perfumes; the blare of trumpets and the shrieking of market-women and the eternal, sub-aural hum of more people, speaking more languages than Gaius had ever imagined existed, crammed together on seven hills whose contours had long ago disappeared beneath this encrustation if humanity. Rome was the pulsing heart of the world – Marion Zimmer Bradley, American author

Quotes inspired by Venice

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, German novelist

A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him. — Arthur Symons, British Poet

To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius – Alexander Herzen, Russian writer (on Venice)

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go — Truman Capote, American author

Venice, its temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven — Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet

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, artist

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone – Erica Jon (on Venice), American novelist

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs. A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave of her structure’s rise As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O’er the far times, when many a subject land Look’d to the winged Lion’s marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles. -Lord Byron

Quotes about Italy inspired by Florence and Tuscany

Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine – Henry James, American author

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. – Mark Twain, American writer

Among the four old bridges that span the river, the Ponte Vecchio, that bridge which is covered with the shops of jewelers and goldsmiths, is a most enchanting feature in the scene. The space of one house, in the center, being left open, the view beyond, is shown as in a frame; and that precious glimpse of sky, and water, and rich buildings, shining so quietly among the huddled roofs and gables on the bridge, is exquisite. – Charles Dickens, English author

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, author, on Tuscany

I do quite like sightseeing. I like churches, museums, galleries and all that stuff. I love the smell of a church in Italy or the smell of an old greasy spoon somewhere. I like markets and little funny shops in the backstreets of Florence. — Ashley Jensen

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

Quotes about Naples

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, English artist

RELATED: Naples is a wonderful, intense, interesting city to visit and also a great base for exploring nearby islands such as Capri

Quotes about Italy and food

No visitor to Italy can escape loving at it least some of its food. Gelato, Rome cuisine specials, Italian breakfast pastries, cannoli…. these are just some of the foods that made people drool and write about it!

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, American personality

Everything you see I owe to pasta – Sophia Loren, Italian actress

Life is a combination of magic and pasta – Federico Fellini, Italian director

Italy will always have the best food – Diane von Furstenberg, fashion designer

More quotes about Italy

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

When life gives you twists and turns, chique yourself up in Italy! – Barbara Conelli, author

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

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

Italians lose wars as if they were football matches, and football matches as if they were wars – Winston Churchill

I hope you enjoyed this selection of travel quotes about Italy and they inspired you to go and see for yourself what all the fuss is about. Safe travels!

Travel Inspiration