The Great French Identity Crisis: When Your Most Famous Icons Are Actually Italian
How France Became the World's Most Successful Cultural Appropriator
Picture this: You're planning the perfect Parisian evening. You'll start with a romantic dinner featuring some classic French onion soup, maybe some macarons for dessert. Then a moonlit stroll to the Louvre to gaze upon the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile. Perhaps you'll reflect on the grandeur of French history, thinking of Napoleon's conquests that shaped Europe.
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But the truth is that almost everything in that perfectly French scenario is actually Italian. And it's a persistent pattern that one begins to wonder if France's greatest talent isn't cuisine or art, but rather the remarkable ability to rebrand other people's achievements as their own.
The Art of Artistic Acquisition
Let's start with the obvious one: the Mona Lisa. La Gioconda, as she's known in her homeland, was painted by Leonardo da Vinci - an Italian, in Italy, of an Italian woman. The painting only ended up in France because da Vinci brought it with him when he moved to work for King Francis I in 1516. Yet today, asking the average person where the Mona Lisa "belongs," they'll point to Paris faster than you can say "Renaissance."
The French have turned this into an art form (pun intended). The Louvre, that temple of French cultural sophistication, is essentially a magnificent warehouse of other civilizations' greatest hits. While this is true of many great museums, there's something particularly audacious about how thoroughly the Mona Lisa has become synonymous with French artistic achievement.
The Napoleon Complex
Then there's Napoleon Bonaparte, the man whose name became synonymous with both French military genius and having something to prove about one's height. Born in Corsica just one year after the island was acquired from the Republic of Genoa, Napoleon was about as French as a pizza margherita. But the Italian connections run much deeper than just geography.
His father, Carlo Maria Buonaparte, was a lawyer who graduated from the University of Pisa and had conducted heraldic research to obtain a patent of nobility from distant relatives in San Miniato - a thoroughly Italian pursuit to establish Italian credentials. His mother, Maria Letizia Ramolino, descended from Tuscan and Lombard nobility. When they married in 1764, she was just 14 and he was 18, and they would go on to have 13 children (eight surviving), creating what was essentially an Italian noble family that happened to live on a recently acquired French island.
The family name tells its own story. Napoleon's baptismal certificate, written in Italian in Ajaccio, recorded the family surname as "Bonaparte" - though it wasn't definitively fixed and appeared in various forms including "Buonaparte." Some accounts suggest Napoleon deliberately changed it to the more French-sounding "Bonaparte" after his father's death in 1785, shortly before marrying Josephine and embarking on his Italian campaign. Even his transformation from Napoleone Buonaparte to Napoleon Bonaparte was a calculated rebranding from Italian to French.
Yet Napoleon became the embodiment of Frenchness. His campaigns are taught as French military history, his legal code as a triumph of French jurisprudence, and his empire as the apex of French power. The man who gave France its greatest imperial moment was, genetically and culturally speaking, more Italian than a Venetian gondolier. His entire family tree was a who's who of Italian nobility, his father was educated in Italy, and even his name required Francification to fit his adopted identity.
Even the Terroir Has Foreign Roots
But let's dig deeper into this cultural archaeology, shall we? Even France's celebrated agricultural foundation - those sun-drenched vineyards and silvery olive groves that define the Mediterranean French lifestyle - aren't originally French innovations.
The ancient Greeks brought olive cultivation to their colonies: Sicily, southern France, the west coast of Spain, establishing the olive groves that would become synonymous with Provence centuries before France was even a coherent political entity. Meanwhile, it is estimated that the Greeks shipped nearly 10 million liters of wine into Gaul each year through Massalia (modern Marseilles), introducing the wine culture that would eventually become France's calling card.
The Romans did much to spread viticulture across the land they knew as Gaul, encouraging the planting of vines in areas that would become the well known wine regions of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alsace, Champagne, Languedoc, Loire Valley and the Rhone. So when you're savoring a glass of Bordeaux while nibbling olives in a sun-dappled café in Aix-en-Provence, you're essentially enjoying a Greek-Roman agricultural legacy that France has spent two millennia perfecting and rebranding as quintessentially French.
French onion soup? The Romans were making versions of it centuries before France figured out how to properly caramelize an onion. The technique of slow-cooking onions in broth was documented in ancient Rome, and similar soups were common throughout the Italian peninsula long before they appeared in French kitchens.
Macarons, those delicate sandwich cookies that have become the Instagram-worthy symbol of French pâtisserie? They trace their origins to Italian amaretti, brought to France by Italian chefs in the service of Catherine de' Medici when she married the future King Henry II in 1533. The French certainly perfected the art, but claiming they invented it is like saying you invented the wheel because you put really nice hubcaps on it.
Even the croissant - surely the most French of all breakfast pastries - has its roots in the Austrian kipferl. Though to be fair, this one came via Austria rather than Italy, proving that France's cultural magpie tendencies aren't limited to their southern neighbors.
The Medici Effect
Speaking of Catherine de' Medici, her arrival in France represents perhaps the most successful cultural transplant in European history. This Italian noblewoman brought not only recipes but an entire culinary philosophy. The sophisticated use of herbs, the emphasis on fresh ingredients, the very concept of multiple courses—these were not French innovations but Italian exports.
Catherine's Italian chefs revolutionized French cuisine, introducing techniques and ingredients that would become the foundation of what we now consider classic French cooking. In a very real sense, French cuisine is Italian cuisine that learned to speak French and got really good at marketing itself.
The Irony of Cultural Supremacy
What makes the situation particularly delicious (like a good Italian-invented French onion soup) is how it intersects with French attitudes toward cultural purity. France has long positioned itself as the guardian of high culture, with the Académie française vigilantly protecting the French language from foreign contamination and French cultural institutions promoting the nation as civilization's gold standard.
Yet their most celebrated cultural artifacts are imports.
The Geography Gets Even Better
But wait, there's more! Even some of France's most celebrated geography is technically Italian hand-me-downs. Nice, that jewel of the French Riviera with its impossibly blue Mediterranean waters and Belle Époque architecture, was Italian until 1860. The entire region from Nice to the Alps - including those stunning Alpes-Maritimes that provide such a dramatic backdrop to the Côte d'Azur - belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont.
The region was politically Italian on paper, but also culturally and linguistically Italian. Italian was the language of administration, education, and daily life in Nice until the French takeover. Many residents spoke Niçard, a dialect closely related to Ligurian Italian, while others used standard Italian. The cultural transformation didn't happen overnight; it took decades of deliberate Francification policies to shift the linguistic landscape.
Even more tellingly, the linguistic connections persist across what is now the French-Italian border. The Occitan patois spoken in the valleys of the French Alps is virtually identical to what you'll hear in the neighboring valleys of Piedmont on the Italian side. Languages don't respect political borders, and these mountain communities share dialects that predate the arbitrary lines drawn by 19th-century treaties.
The Treaty of Turin in 1860 handed over Nice and Savoy to France in exchange for French support of Italian unification. So when you're sipping champagne on the Promenade des Anglais, admiring the "quintessentially French" Mediterranean lifestyle, you're actually enjoying what was, until relatively recently, an Italian seaside resort that happened to change management - and languages.
And Savoy? That Alpine paradise of ski resorts and mountain chalets that epitomizes French mountain culture? Also Italian until 1860. Chamonix, Annecy, those picturesque villages that seem torn from a French fairy tale - all formerly part of the Duchy of Savoy. Even the landscape that defines the French Alps was Italian longer than it's been French.
But perhaps most remarkably, some valleys in the border regions remained Italian until World War II. Areas around villages like Saorge in the Roya Valley only became French in 1947 after the Treaty of Paris. Walk through these mountain villages today, and the evidence is everywhere - surnames that are unmistakably Italian, architecture that wouldn't look out of place in Liguria, and a cultural DNA that's only been nominally French for about as long as your parents have been alive.
But regions that are still Italian today risked losing their Italian identity too. At the end of World War II, between May and July 1945, French troops militarily occupied the Piedmontese Alpine territory of the Cuneo province, including the city of Cuneo, as a gesture of revenge against Italy. The occupation, ordered by Charles de Gaulle to annex the territory to France, was short-lived and ended due to pressure from the Anglo-American Allies, who threatened to cut off economic aid to France.
These are living reminders that France's southeastern border was still shifting within living memory. There are people alive today who were born Italian and became French not through immigration, but because the border literally moved over them.
It's almost as if France looked at a map of Italy and said, "We'll take the Mona Lisa, Napoleon, the cuisine, and also - could we get some of that gorgeous coastline and those mountains? Thanks."
A Tale of Two Approaches to Cultural Assimilation
Here's where the story takes a more serious turn, revealing something telling about different approaches to cultural diversity. Compare how France and Italy handled their newly acquired territories with distinct linguistic minorities.
When Italy gained South Tyrol (Alto Adige) after World War I - a region that had been Austrian for centuries and was overwhelmingly German-speaking - there was certainly pressure to Italianize. Mussolini's fascist regime attempted aggressive cultural colonization in the 1920s and 1930s, banning German in schools and public life, changing German place names to Italian ones, and encouraging Italian settlement. It was a dark chapter that caused real suffering.
However, there is a remarkable difference: South Tyrol today remains triumphantly German. Drive through Bolzano or Merano and you'll hear German as the primary language. Street signs are bilingual, cultural traditions flourish, and the region maintains a distinct Austrian-German identity while being fully integrated into Italy. After the fall of fascism, Italy chose accommodation over assimilation, granting significant autonomy that has made South Tyrol one of Europe's most successful examples of minority rights protection.
Meanwhile, what happened to the Italian-speaking populations that France acquired? The linguistic Francification of Nice, Savoy, and the border valleys was thorough and largely successful. The Italian language, the official language of the County of Nice, used by the Church, at the town hall, taught in schools, used in theaters and at the Opera, was immediately abolished and replaced by French.
French became the language of education, administration, and eventually daily life. While some dialects survive in remote valleys, the vibrant Italian culture that once defined these regions has been largely absorbed into French identity.
The contrast is striking: Italy, despite its fascist interlude, ultimately chose to preserve cultural diversity within its borders. France, the birthplace of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, pursued a more assimilationist approach that effectively erased the Italian character of its acquired territories. Today, a tourist in South Tyrol immediately recognizes they're in a German-speaking region that happens to be in Italy. A tourist in Nice has no idea they're walking through what was, until relatively recently, an Italian city. France didn't simply acquire these cultural treasures; they curated, preserved, and promoted them with unmatched sophistication. At the Louvre, the Mona Lisa isn’t merely stored but surrounded by an entire mystique. French chefs took Italian techniques and transformed them into a codified, refined tradition of haute cuisine.
Napoleon may have been born Italian, but he became emperor through French institutions and led French armies to reshape Europe. The transformation of these Italian origins into quintessentially French achievements represents a kind of cultural alchemy that's arguably more impressive than creating something from scratch.
A Pattern Worth Pondering
Every culture is a mixture of influences, and the ability to synthesize disparate elements into something new and distinctive is its own form of creativity. But there's something wonderfully absurd about how consistently France's most iconic symbols, people, foods, and even geography trace back across the Alps.
It raises interesting questions about cultural identity and ownership. When does an adopted cultural element become authentically "yours"? How long do you need to tend someone else's garden before you can claim to have grown the flowers?
The French don't seem particularly troubled by the Italian origins of their greatest hits. They've embraced them, perfected them, and made them their own with such confidence that the rest of the world has largely accepted the rebranding.
Vive la Différence?
In the end, maybe France's greatest cultural achievement isn't the Mona Lisa, Napoleon, or even French onion soup. Maybe it's the demonstration that cultural identity isn't about origins - it's about what you do with what you inherit. France took Italian ingredients and created a French feast, both literally and figuratively.
Though one does have to wonder: if France's most famous cultural exports are actually Italian, what does that make Italy? The uncredited ghostwriter of European civilization? The cultural equivalent of a songwriter who sold the rights to their greatest hits and watched someone else get rich and famous performing them?
Buongiorno from Paris, indeed.