Italy overrated: My 10 most overrated things in my adopted country (do you really like Prosecco?)

The Internet does not have enough cyberspace to fit all the superlatives written about Italy. For more than 2,000 years, writers have lauded this land for everything from its pristine beaches to its tomato sauce. Venice. The Dolomites. Michelangelo sculptures. Bottles of Chianti under sun-splashed grapevines in Tuscany. Every day one could write a sweet ode to Italy that makes you want to put on Andrea Bocelli or hop a plane.

Today is not one of those days.

I’ve lived in Italy for nearly 13 years, over two stints, and the honeymoon wore off sometime after I saw my first Rome city bus inexplicably burst into flames. I have indeed sung the praises of my adopted country since retiring here in 2014 and would not live anywhere else.

However, today I take a hard look at Italy through my darkest lens. What you may love about Italy is what I may hate. Travel is the ultimate exercise in subjectivity, and in my opinion some popular topics in Italy are overblown. 

No, I am not finding a mole on Beyonce. There are some popular aspects of Italy that make me cringe. So I recently jotted down my 10 most overrated things in Italy (in no particular order) while waiting for another bus that was an hour late.

You may disagree. You may fume. Fine. Go drown your anger in Prosecco. I won’t fight you for it. Which brings us to the first overrated thing in Italy.

Prosecco

Italy’s version of Champagne is what people bring to a party when they’re too lazy to think of an appropriate wine and want to look Italian. Prosecco should be called Prosucko. It all tastes the same and if I hear one more Italian tell me I must try it in Veneto where it originated, I’ll shove a Barolo cork down their throat. I’ve tried it in Veneto. It’s a vile swill with bubbles. The only thing it gives you is a headache.

Truffles

Some of these prized mushrooms cost more than a mortgage payment. They have this pungent, earthy smell that makes them seem like they’ve sat on a kitchen counter over a hot summer in Naples. People shave them on eggs and bleat out an orgasmic swoon like they’re an aphrodisiac. I’ve tried them on scrambled eggs and the only thing that aroused me was the chocolate cornetto next to them. Who would pay $4,000 for a pound of white truffles? Even black truffles are $300-$800. I say leave them to the pigs who dig them up. 

Milan

Picture Newark with a big church and you have Milan. It’s gray. It’s cold. It’s Italy with a New York mentality. The “Fashion Capital of the World” is just a label to jack up clothes prices. It was nearly rebuilt after World War II and after the Duomo, it has all the architectural charm of 1965 Prague. The Navigli canal district is nice but so overrun with tourists, the city adhered to residents’ complaints last year and started limiting the sale of food and alcohol after midnight. Also, how can you can love any Italian city in which its trademark dish is ossobuco? It’s veal shanks with vegetables. What’s the big deal?

Bocca della Verita’

Every time I take the H bus through Rome’s Centro Storico, I see a long line outside the otherwise lovely medieval Chiesa di Santa Maria in Cosmedin. No, it’s not to see the Adoration of the Magi mosaic from the 8th century. It’s to stick their hand through a hole in a marble disc. The disc is a bearded face and during Ancient Rome was once part of a fountain – or a manhole cover. The hole is the man’s mouth. According to legend, if you put your hand in the hole and tell a lie, the bocca will bite your hand off. Thousands of people every day wait in line with their cellphone-snapping loved one and say they’ve never cheated on them – hoping later no one starts calling them Lefty.

Fettuccine Alfredo

A little insight into the Italian kitchen: Italians don’t make fettuccine Alfredo. I don’t know many Italians who have tried fettuccine Alfredo. The one dish that dons menus of every lousy Italian restaurant in the U.S. is served primarily in just one place in Rome: Ristorante Alfredo where it was invented in 1914. Owner Alfredo Di Lelio invented a filling dish for his wife who fell ill after giving birth. He combined fettuccine noodles with butter and parmesan. That’s it. Ristorante Alfredo is still around. It’s packed every day. Its walls are covered with photos of famous diners such as Jimi Hendrix and Marilyn Monroe. I tried it for the first and only time at Ristorante Alfredo. It is good. But it’s about Italian as a chimichanga is Mexican.

Italian music

A disclaimer: I don’t like music. None of it. From classical to country western, I have no appreciation for music of any kind. Why? It’s a long story and it’s between me and my therapist. But some music I detest more than others. Country western. Latin. Anything by the Eagles. You want me to leave the room? Put on Hotel California. I will flee. But Italian music is right down there. Italy is famous for its love songs, and every one sounds the same, like they belong in a dive lounge act at a Palermo Holiday Inn. I can’t tell one singer or band from another.  My version of Hell is being forced to sit through the Sanremo Music Festival. The only thing worse than an Italian singer is someone trying to become an Italian singer.

Fascism

OK, everybody can stop asking me what’s it like living under a fascist government. Prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party does have roots dating back to Benito Mussolini but in her three years in charge she has been pretty benign. She has actively distanced herself and her party from Mussolini. In the process, she has lowered unemployment, raised the Gross National Product and attracted foreign investors while still supporting Ukraine and the European Union. Many of us liberals remain cautious but I’d much rather live under this government than other governments I know about between Canada and Mexico.

Mortadella

I recently read that Bologna is starting to get too crowded from tourists flocking to the city, not for spaghetti bolognese, which is worth moving your life for, but for its signature mortadella. It is salami made from (I hope you haven’t had breakfast.) hashed or ground cured pork which consists of at least 15 percent small cubes of fat from the pig’s neck. It looks as disgusting as it sounds: pale, pinkish, thinly sliced pork with white fat chunks floating around like cancer cells on a lung. Many of Bologna’s charming stores in the center have been replaced by chain butcher shops which emerged after Covid to sell Mortadella to tourists. Gift stores now feature statues of pigs oddly smiling with knives and forks. Mortadella is the chopped liver of Italian meats.

Italian drivers

Again, stop it. Please. I don’t want anyone returning from Italy and complaining about “those crazy Italian drivers.” Italian drivers aren’t crazy. They don’t go faster than anyone else. They don’t drive on sidewalks. Yes, 38 pedestrians were killed by cars in Rome the first eight months last year but that’s because Rome has more ski slopes than sidewalks and people must walk in the street. People talk about “crazy Italian drivers” because it makes them sound like Italian insiders. They don’t. They sound like dumb tourists.

Cinque Terre

The five villages that hang off cliffs in the Liguria region of  northwest Italy have graced posters in travel offices from Boston to Bangkok. I do think Vernazza has one of the prettiest ports in Italy. But the last time I was there I could barely see the water from the massive clog of humanity on the docks. The wave of tourists that pour down the street from the tiny train station looks like a cruise ship disgorging a mob on a tiny island. In September when the weather begins to cool, the hiking trail linking the five towns looks like Rome’s A90 at rush hour. The towns of Riomaggiore and Manarola have tried limiting the number of visitors to no avail. You love Liguria and beautiful ports? Go to Santa Margherita 40 miles to the north.