The Best Gifts for Italy Lovers (That They'll Actually Keep)
Italy does something to people. Once you've been, you don't really come back the same way you left. The light is different there — warmer, more golden, the kind of light that makes everything look like a painting. The food is better than anywhere else on earth. The towns are achingly beautiful. And the feeling of standing in a piazza at dusk with a glass of wine, the swallows wheeling overhead and the ancient buildings glowing amber — there's nothing quite like it.
If someone in your life has been bitten by the Italy bug, you already know it. They talk about it constantly. They cook Italian food at home and it's not quite the same. They have a trip planned, or they're planning a trip, or they've just come back and they can't stop thinking about going again. Finding a gift for them isn't difficult — Italy gives you a lot to work with. Here are the best gifts for Italy lovers, from the personal to the practical to the genuinely beautiful.
A Watercolour Print of the Place That Means the Most to Them
If you want to give something that will genuinely stop them in their tracks, give them a print of the Italian place that means the most to them. Not a photograph — a watercolour. There's something about the way watercolour captures the softness of Italian light, the haze over the hills, the blur of bougainvillea against white walls, that a photograph simply can't replicate. It looks like a memory rather than a record.
Our watercolour destination print collection includes Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast, Positano, the Cinque Terre, Santorini, the French Riviera and many more. Each print is made to order on premium fine art paper — A4 from £19.99, A3 from £39.99 — with free UK shipping on every order. The effect when it goes up on a wall is genuinely remarkable. It transforms a room.
A Gallery Wall Starter Set
For someone who's visited more than one Italian destination — which is almost everyone who's been once — the real gift is the start of a gallery wall. Three prints of three different places: the town where they had the best meal of their life, the coastline they walked for hours, the city they keep promising themselves they'll go back to. Wrapped together, it's a gift that transforms a wall rather than just decorating it.
Use code BUY2GET1 at checkout on the Sundays In Tuscany website and get a third print free when you buy two. Three prints, the price of two — the most generous gift you can give for well under a hundred pounds. Add a simple white frame from IKEA and it's ready to hang on Christmas morning.
An Italian Cookbook Worth Keeping
Not just any Italian cookbook — the kind that becomes a household reference, that gets marked and dog-eared and splattered with olive oil over years of use. The Silver Spoon is the definitive Italian cookbook, a 1,000-page compendium of Italian regional cooking that every serious cook should own. For something more personal and readable, Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is perhaps the best Italian cookbook ever written — generous, opinionated and completely authoritative. For the Italophile who already has both, Stanley Tucci's Taste is a love letter to Italian food that reads as beautifully as it cooks.
Italian Ceramics
The hand-painted ceramics of southern Italy — the lemon-yellow pottery of Positano, the intricate painted plates of Vietri sul Mare, the bold colours of Sicilian majolica — are among the most beautiful objects Italy produces. A set of hand-painted pasta bowls, a lemon-print serving platter or a painted espresso cup is a daily reminder of Italy that works perfectly in a British kitchen. Amalfi Design and Made in Italy UK both stock genuine handmade pieces — expect to pay £30-£80 for something truly beautiful.
A Proper Moka Pot and Italian Coffee
The Bialetti Moka Express is one of the great objects of Italian design — a stovetop espresso maker that has barely changed since 1933 and makes better coffee than most machines that cost ten times the price. Pair it with a bag of Illy or Lavazza ground coffee and you've given someone a morning ritual they'll use every day. It's a practical gift that somehow also feels completely Italian. The three-cup version is £25-£30; the six-cup is worth the extra few pounds if they're serious coffee drinkers.
A Book About Italy
Italy has inspired more great writing than almost any other country, and the best books about it are the kind that make you want to drop everything and book a flight. Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun is the book that sent a generation of women to Tuscany and remains one of the most pleasurable reads about Italian life ever written. For something more literary, Tim Parks' Italian Neighbours is a deeply funny and affectionate account of settling in the Veneto. And for pure escapism, Joanne Harris' The Lollipop Shoes doesn't count — but Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, set in Naples over fifty years, are arguably the greatest Italian fiction of the past century. Start with My Brilliant Friend.
Italian Leather Goods
Florence has been producing exceptional leather goods since the Renaissance, and Italian leather — a proper Italian leather notebook, card holder or purse — has a quality and warmth that mass-produced alternatives can't match. The Florentine paper and leather brands Il Papiro and Giulio Giannini both produce beautiful hand-marbled notebooks and leather-bound journals that feel like a piece of Florence you can carry in your bag. For something more contemporary, Italian leather brands like Il Bisonte and Furla offer gifts at a range of price points that hold their beauty for years.
A Limoncello Kit
Limoncello — the sweet, intensely lemony liqueur made from the rinds of Amalfi lemons — is one of those things that tastes extraordinary in Italy and slightly disappointing everywhere else. The solution is to make your own. A good home limoncello kit (Lakeland does a simple one for around £25) produces something genuinely excellent and gives the Italy lover in your life a project as well as a drink. Alternatively, a bottle of genuine Amalfi limoncello from an Italian deli — made with IGP lemons and no artificial flavouring — is the closest you'll get to standing on a Positano terrace without actually being there.
A Language Learning Course
Italian is widely considered the most beautiful language in the world — and, for an English speaker, one of the more learnable Romance languages. A subscription to Pimsleur Italian (around £15 a month) or a Berlitz Italian course is a gift that keeps giving every time they use it in an Italian market, restaurant or taxi. There's something deeply satisfying about being able to ask for directions in Florence and actually understand the answer. For a lighter touch, a phrase book from Collins or Lonely Planet and an Eataly gift card make a charming pair.
An Italian Experience Closer to Home
The gift that's harder to give but impossible to forget — a proper Italian cooking class, a wine tasting focused on Italian regions, or an Italian cinema evening — brings Italy to them rather than the other way around. Jamie Oliver's cookery school in London runs Italian-focused classes from around £150. Vinopolis (or your local independent wine shop) often runs Italian wine nights. And a quiet evening of Fellini and handmade pasta is an experience worth more than most things you can wrap.
The Gift They'll Keep for Years
Ultimately, the best gift for an Italy lover is something that keeps Italy present in their daily life — something that brings a little warmth and beauty to an ordinary Tuesday morning. A watercolour print of the place that changed them, a cookbook that recreates the flavours, a moka pot that brings back the mornings — these are the gifts that last. They're the gifts that make someone think of you every time they use them. That's the kind of giving worth doing.