Beauty and history flooded over me like the sunlight as I strolled through the slim, winding streets of a Tuscan town. I was submerged in an environment rich with sensory delight – from the medieval and Renaissance architecture rising on all sides, to the lilting sound of a street musician’s accordion, to the smell of fresh, creamy pastas and delicate pastries emanating from sidewalk cafes and bistros. Above these ancient cobblestone streets, the blue foothills of the Apennines rose in the distance, silent guardians of the valley.

My experience of Italy left me with a suitcase full of reflections on culture, both Italian and American. I’m still rummaging through it. From these fragments, I’ve found at least three aspects of Italian culture that Americans could benefit from – and one that we should definitely avoid.

First, the positives. Italian culture is suffused with beauty, and Italians seem to have a much broader and deeper aesthetic sense than we Americans do. It’s a particular weakness of American culture that it inclines toward the ugly, the vulgar, and the utilitarian. Maybe because of our pragmatic, puritan roots, we don’t value beauty in our public spaces very highly. But the human soul was made with the capacity to recognize and appreciate beauty, and our culture ought to honor this instinct placed in us by the Creator. Beauty elevates, ennobles, consoles, and inspires. It’s no exaggeration to say that ugly environments and a lack of taste can be a demoralizing factor in a society.

Italians seem generally attune to beauty. From the gorgeous landscapes of places like the Cinque Terre coastline, to the preservation of stately classical architecture, to the richly decorated, centuries-old churches, to the multitude of Italian painters, musicians, and sculptors, to the sense of style in dress and presentation in food – beauty is everywhere in Italy. This is the sign of a humane culture. It is a deeply human thing to incorporate beauty into daily life. It’s something that sets us apart from animals, who do not have aesthetic sense. Italy showed me how everything from streetlamps to banks can be both functional and beautiful; it’s not an either/or binary.

Another admirable aspect of Italian culture is its understanding of food and eating. In Italy, a meal is not a pragmatic affair of inserting calories into the body while dashing out the door, driving, or crashing in front of the TV. It is a cultural and social act. People in Italy eat with intentionality and relish, not mindlessly (which is probably one reason they tend to be thinner). The meal becomes a focal point for social interaction, conversation, laughter. It’s accompanied by fine wine, and the courses can stretch on for some time, with conversation stretching even longer. When I was in Italy, the piazza adjoining my accommodations was often filled with laughter, talk, and clinking glasses well into the night – sometimes until 1 a.m.

Maybe it’s because Italians respect the sacredness of communal meals that they insist on high quality ingredients as well. Food is taken seriously, understood as a cornerstone of culture and one of the basic forms of social cohesion. The commodification and industrialization of food has wounded American culture far more than we realize.

Finally, Italian cities – at least those that have preserved their original footprints – are highly walkable and built on a smaller scale than most American urban centers that sprawl out mile after mile. American cities are built to the scale of the machine (the automobile), while the Italian cities I saw are built to the scale of the human being. Buildings are not impossibly tall, streets are not huge and filled with rushing vehicles. It’s a world a human can move in and feel at home in. Moreover, the traditional cities are often mixed-use spaces, where places to shop, eat, sleep, educate, and work all intermingle to support a more cohesive and integrated lifestyle. These principles, too, could be adopted more by American city planners.

However, there’s one significant area where America ought to move in the opposite direction of the Italians: family life. To put it harshly, Italians are dying out. They’re experiencing a birthrate crisis even more severe than what we’ve witnessed in the States. Italy’s population is one of the oldest and most sharply declining in the world, and they’ve essentially doomed themselves by failing to support and promote families and children.

According to one American I spoke to who lives in Italy, young Italians don’t even think about getting married and raising children. It’s only when someone hits their 30s, 40s, 50s, or even 60s that marriage and childrearing becomes part of the conversation.

As a result, Italy’s birthrate is now somewhere around 1.2 births per woman, far below replacement rate. In 2023, there were zero births in 358 villages and towns. Only 370,000 babies were born in the whole country in 2024, the lowest figure since the unification of Italy in 1861. Once the population drops enough in a given area, the basic structures of society begin crumbling and no one wants to live there anymore. “It’s a vicious cycle,” Alessandro Rosina of the Catholic University of Milan says. “The population falls, services are cut and young people move elsewhere.” This is the consequence of failing at the most basic of cultural acts, the perpetuation of the family.

The U.S. needs desperately to avoid this same trap, this cultural suicide through rejection of marriage and family. It leads – literally – to a dying society. It’s the end of the road.

At the same time, we have a lot to learn from Italy about the importance of incorporating beauty and history into culture and everyday life. Once again, it’s a both/and, not an either/or. A truly living society is one filled with art, beauty, and thriving families.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image Credit: Needpix