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ITALIAN HABITS

Dressing up and slowing down: The unwritten rules of an Italian Sunday lunch

Sunday lunches are a cornerstone of Italian life and society, but if you've been invited to one what exactly should you expect?

Published: 23 February 2024 09:06 CET
Updated: 24 February 2024 11:44 CET
Rome, restaurant
Interior view of a Rome restaurant. Photo by Anna Church on Unsplash

Sunday lunch is an important tradition in many countries, but Italy’s pranzo della domenica takes things to another level.

Far from being just a meal, it’s a key part of Italian society providing families and friends with an opportunity to come together and celebrate their bond over food and wine.

READ ALSO: Three meals a day on schedule: Why do Italians have such fixed eating habits?

If you’ve been living in Italy for some time, or have relatives in the country, chances are you’ve already attended a traditional Sunday lunch. But if you’ve just been invited to your first, what can you expect?

Everyone dresses up

You may think of Sunday lunch as a relaxed situation where participants are more or less free to wear whatever they want as long as they look half presentable. 

Fashion-conscious Italians however aim to look smart even on occasions when none but close family members or friends are present, just to make una bella figura, or ‘a good impression’.

It’s not at all rare for Italians to turn up to Sunday lunch with fancy outfits and flashy accessories. Keeping this in mind when picking out your own attire may well spare you some funny looks from across the table later on.

You’re there for the long haul

Think of a very, very long meal, then add a couple of hours, and you may get close to the average length of an Italian Sunday lunch. 

Pranzi domenicali are no brief business and it’s not just because of the unconscionably large quantities of food being served, but also because Italians like to take things slowly, and try to extend social occasions for as long as they can. 

Overall, it’s not rare for a Sunday lunch to last three, four or even five hours in some areas of the country.

Restaurant, Campania

Customers sat at a restaurant in Ravello, Campania. Photo by Sterlinglanier on Unsplash

Food to feed an army

Starter (antipasto), first course (primo piatto), second course (secondo) and sides (contorni), cheese or fruit, and dessert – all served in generous portions. 

That’s the very minimum you can expect from a Sunday lunch.

READ ALSO: How many different types of pasta are there in Italy?

The jury is still out on exactly how Italians can get through food marathons of this scale on a regular basis, but what’s certain is that you’ll find it hard to keep up with them, at least for the first couple of outings.

If you can’t finish your food, don’t worry: an overly dramatic non ce la faccio piu’ (literally, ‘I can’t take it anymore’) will usually get you off the hook.

The digestivo ritual

By the time lunch comes to an end, you’ll likely find yourself wondering how many working days your body’s going to take to process all of the food you’ve just eaten.

Luckily, you’ll get a chance to give your stomach a helping hand by drinking a digestivo, a highly alcoholic, intensely flavoured liqueur which Italians swear by when it comes to digestion issues.

READ ALSO: Are Italians really drinking less wine?

Whether it is an amaro, a limoncello, or some fiery grappa, the digestivo will be served neat in a small shot glass (but shouldn’t be guzzled in one go like a shot).

You may hear some Italians refer to the digestif as ammazzacaffe’ (or ‘coffee killer’) as it generally deadens the caffeine buzz of the espresso consumed at the end of lunch.

Pennichella time

Sunday lunches in Italy can be a bit hard on people with low noise tolerance (Italians aren’t exactly known for being soft-spoken, and that tends to get worse after a few glasses of red).

But you can generally expect the chatter to fizzle out pretty quickly after the last round of digestivi as most people drift into the quintessential pennichella – a post-lunch snooze revitalising body and soul.

You can either join the others in the land of Nod, or sit back and enjoy the longed-for silence.

Do you think we’ve missed anything? Let us know in the comments below.

Member comments

  1. Three decades in (northern) Italy, married to an Italian wife and previously a long term Italian girlfriend. I often read about these mega Italian family Sunday lunches, but have never experienced one. My wife absolutely refutes that they are a “cornerstone of Italian life”. Possibly this is more of a Southern thing, or it depends on the family involved.

  2. For years when invited to dine ” a mezzogiorno” I would arrive at noon only to find that none of the other guests were there yet. Finally I realized this had nothing to do with an exact time but was merely a way to say come to lunch and I adjusted my arrival to somewhere between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m.

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ITALIAN TRADITIONS

Why do Italians take such long summer holidays?

Summer holidays in Italy mean workplaces emptying for weeks on end, a flood of 'out of office' replies from colleagues and clients, and deserted cities. But why is the long break so ingrained in Italian society?

Published: 4 July 2024 14:37 CEST
Why do Italians take such long summer holidays?

If you live in Italy, there’s a good chance you’ll be painfully familiar with the following scene: it’s early August and you head down to your favourite trattoria looking to treat yourself to a nice plate of bucatini pasta only to find shuttered windows, stacked patio chairs, and a sign hanging on the door saying ‘chiuso per ferie’ (‘closed for the holidays’).

What’s worse, you realise that the place is going to be shut for four consecutive weeks, meaning you’ll have to put off your craving for a culinary sfizio (‘treat’) until September. 

The long August break is generally one of, if not the most baffling aspect of Italian life for foreign nationals in the country.

After all, Italy as a whole pretty much grinds to a halt in early August, with millions of Italians leaving for their holiday destinations at the same time and anything from private businesses and hospitality establishments to public offices and banks closing for two to four weeks (usually to the delight of anyone looking to get any sort of official paperwork done). 

But why do Italians take such long summer holidays?

As it’s generally the case with most Italian habits and traditions, it’s hard to pinpoint a single factor behind the long August ferie (‘holidays’). 

READ ALSO: Nine unmistakable signs that summer has arrived in Italy

Surely, history plays no small part in the custom as experts believe the lengthy break may trace all the way back to Roman times, and specifically to emperor Augustus, who first established a long period of rest for farm hands and labourers known as Augustali, to be celebrated right after the end of harvest season. 

The long August break later survived the fall of the Roman empire as Christianity removed the more pagan aspects of the holiday, replacing them with liturgical observances and celebrations, including the Assumption of Mary, on August 15th. 

Finally, in the first half of the 20th century, the Fascist regime further legitimised the custom, with dictator Benito Mussolini himself enshrining the August holidays as a much-deserved break from the hard work carried out in factories and fields.

But while the long history behind the August holidays surely goes a long way towards explaining why they are so entrenched in Italian society, there are other considerations to be made.

First of all, August is the hottest month of summer in Italy, with daytime temperatures hovering between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius in many parts of the country and high levels of humidity.

This makes the August holidays something of a necessity for a whole range of occupations involving hard manual labour carried out outdoors. 

READ ALSO: Why do Italians have such clean homes?

Secondly, it’s worth pointing out that Italian sindacati are among the most powerful trade unions in Europe, with most organisations gaining significant bargaining power in the aftermath of World War II (the Fascist regime had banned independent workers’ unions) and retaining it up to this day. 

Under collective labour agreements in some public sectors, many offices can legally remain completely closed for as long as two or even three consecutive weeks. 

This means that an employee couldn’t actually work during that period of time even in the (unlikely) event that he wanted to. 

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