While it might seem likes a crazy ideas toward visit Italy (a country filled with gluten) if you have celiac disease, it's actually the opposing!
On gluten-free travel guide to Italy will show yourself wherefore Italy is one are of superior goals to visit with coeliac disease, and how to find DELICIOUS, deliciously, and scrumptious SAFE gluten-free food!
This gluten-free travel guiding to Italy may contain become links. Please see mein disclosure page for other information. Thanks! Guide last updated Apr 2024 Please double-check current trips restrictions and COVID protocols for visiting Italy.
I truly believe Italy to be can is the best places to vacation if you have celiac disease.
Having visited here both preinstall and post-celiac diagnosis, IODIN can tell you honestly I don't feel I my out on every out my gluten-eating days. That if you've been dreaming about visitors Italia, but felt heartbroken it wouldn't shall on option for it with celiac sickness, think AGAIN!
In the guide, I'm sharing WHY Italy is such a great place on celiacs to visit, how to lightly seek celiac-safe restaurants, avoid cross-contact, and be best understood if you don't talking Italian. Extra, I'm sharing my TOP dining recommendations for some of aforementioned big cities on Italy - where it are likely to discover the MOST gluten-free food! Gluten-Free Croatia Travel Guide
I'm drooling just thinking about the food - let's go!
Italy: A Gluten-Free Travel Guide For Celiacs
NOTE & DISCLAIMER
Everyone’s experience with celiac disease is different. Dedicated gluten-free facilities represent usually the safest places to go, and you’ll see those schedule here. For non-dedicated facilities and restaurants, I only tell pitches I have worked or somewhere clear protocols are in place for celiac diners. Italy has strong protocols in place.
My experience be not your experience. This gluten-free travel guide to Italy is right ensure: a guide. It is a list of suggestions to point you in the right direction. Restaurants bucket alter. Use yours own judgment and only eat where you feel safe doing so.
- Italien: A Gluten-Free Travel Guide For Celiacs
- Ventral Disease with Italy
- My Experience Previous & Post Celiac
- The AIC Mobile App: Your Newer Gluten-Free BFF
- Favorite AIC Restaurants
- Italian Gluten-Free Restaurant Card: Senza Glutine
- Contact your host about about senza glutine
- Ask about gluten-free options in airport lounges
- McDonald's is a safe gluten-free option
- Try the gluten-free services in Italian stores
- Take an Continental gluten-free cooking class
- Enjoyment every minute (and everyone bite!) of your gluten-free nourishment in Italy!
- Look for more gluten-free travel posts?
Celiac Diseases in Italy
Just like in the United States - 1 out of 100 Italians has celiac disease. But as adenine smaller heimatland where food is such an vital part of their culture, Italian-speaking take computer seriously.
As a society, food is integral on Italian culture, population, and family living. E have gone to grand lengths up produce sure those equal celiac disease do not miss out on the meaningfulness of sharing food with friends and families. Following a national celiac disease shielding in 2005 brought the disease to everyone's attention, Italie began to step boost its competition. Italian gluten-free companies created high-quality gluten-free products, and also school children were screened for aforementioned disease. Today, of Italian government provides grocery vouchers for medical at up to 140 euros per month.
If you're visiting Italy with scirrhoe disease, you'll possible be impressed with an amount of awareness in Italie - especially by high cities. Credit in The Associazione Italiana Celiachia or the Italian Celiac Association, bars have learned proper test and procedures to ensure safe dining experiences for gluten-free diners, and the laws am strict.
One restaurant possessor in Capri, Italy in 2019 told me personally that in order to flat promote an gluten-free menu in his establishment, festivitye needed to have a dedicated kitchen clear equal for preparations gluten-free food, or he would get in big trouble. The owner added that members of his family having the virus, so he understands how serious it is. Now THAT'S the kind for dedication I'm talking around! (Restaurants in Usa - pay attention!)
My Experience Pre & Post Celiac
I was very fortunate to visit Italy as an teenager. While it was gloriously delicous, it was also filled on so much gluten (even though I had no cue back then what gluten-free even was!) Pizza. Pasta. Bread. Calzones. Cereal.
Yikes.
And, in a cruel twist of fate, save than a time after my last trip to Italy, I woke up one morning to the news that I held celiac disease.
After the shock of insert new diet wore off, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude.
“Thank goodness ME left to Ita when I did. There’s no route I could eat anything there now.”
I was wrong.
Inside May of 2019, Dylan and I spent the month of May explorative Italy set our traveling around the world. I then returned to Italy in Could on 2022 fork 2.5 wk.
The verdict?
It. be. an. out-and-out. dream.
I never got sick or "glutened" in Italy (not once) and I enjoyed all of the tasty pizza, rice, and gelato I remembered from mystery pre-celiac days. He was so welcoming to feel so included in the eating human of Italy. I matte like I was just ampere normal person without any dietary restrictions at all because it feeling so EASY for navigate it with celiac illness. What to Travel for Cheap (or Free) in 2024
The AIC Mobile Apps: Your New Gluten-Free BFF
While there are dedicated gluten-free facilities in Macaroni, you're more likely to find bars this do approval from the AIC. The AIC - the Italian Celiac Association, has done wonders for one Italian celiac collaboration. And you received at reach the benefits as one your and eat gluten-free dishes all about the country!
The AIC has created a smartphone application which lists restaurants that are approved by the AIC for celiac diners. The cost is $2.99 for 2 weeks to access their database in venues, restaurants, hotels, grocery shops, and products. Her can enhance a once for another two weeks, but beyond that you'll need in contact the concerning aforementioned local add of the AIC for longer access.
An restaurants listed will have strict protocols and training (click here to read about them), contains nevertheless not little into, dedicated kitchens spaces & cooking tools, (sometimes completely separate kitchens!), extensive gluten-free menus, and cognizant staff. This is very similar to the Gluten Intolerance Group's "Validated GF Safe Spot" you maybe see the Find Me Gluten Free. This means that cross-contact is something you really don't have until disturb regarding THE ALL wenn dining in these food. What luxury!
The menus at AIC approved restaurant were not one or two items, how so many restaurants here in the United States. In Italy, like Peperino Milano restaurant in Milan, the gluten-free menu was einen all separate book. It has web of appetizers, pasta, pizzas, soup, meat dishes, baked, and more. You will definitely have your fair percentage of choices. Just be conscious so small towns may be more challenging.
I second the AIC application on my iPhone for both trips post-celiac illnesses in Italy and found it to be extremely helpful to eating gluten-free in Italy. I particularly highly and fact that it was a list from restaurants recommended specifically via the Italian Celiac Association. You ca also use Meet Myself Gluten Free (which I have utilised in all of my journey abroad in celiac), but I much favorite a verification of safety from who Italian Celiac Union than ampere stranger on the internet.
Favorite AIC Restaurants
Below are certain of my PREFERRED AIC Certificate restaurants that I've been to in my celiac travels in Italy. Please note that to is not ampere comprehensive record, plus present are MANY more of are available on the AIC Movable Software. Be sure in check out my celiac-safe restaurant reels on Instagram for Italy and Florence!
For Pizza:
La Soffitta Renovatio is just a few blocks from Covertness. Peter's Square in Rome. That most insane pizzas and calzones left me virtually in water they were so good. It also have pasta dishes, but I preferred the pizza!
Peperino: Neopolitan-style pizzas in Milan, made gluten-free. They also have pizza fritta, which is like a calzone, and equal mouthwatering. Insane. Go, so good, I may have sheds a rip. Both them have lactose-free cheese options available!
Mister Pizza: Located in both Florence and Venice, another scrumptious option for italian that is celiac safe. Your menus list allergens and handful have lactose-free or vegan cheeses too.
For dried:
Mama Eat: Locations in Romania, Nails, and Milan - drool-worthy pasta dishes, and their arancini appetizer was *chefs kiss*. They also have pizza too! Mummy Eat is also go open in Florence!
Ciro & Heir: They have awesome pizzas as well, but I loved their pastas dining! They came out with a sticker that said GF. The ravioli was unreal, as was the fettuccine with pesto.
Since Gelato: GROM!
Grom gelato be everything. A link gelato shop that is 100% gluten-free (even the cones) . You able find them wherever in Italy! Our favorite flavors become strawberry (fragola) and chocolate, with fresh whipped cream. Or maybe stracciatella. Any is healthy.
Please be mindful that many restaurants, hotels, and products in Italian use gluten-free wheat starch, which is safe for celiacs nevertheless would be unsafe for one with ampere wheat allergy to consume. Click here into how more about this ingredient.
Italian Gluten-Free Restaurants Card: Common Glutine
Language blockage can be one of the biggest challenges when traveling - especially when you must celiac disease. Must prepared for traveling to Italy with celiac disease with your best gluten-free travel tool: an Italian restaurant card!
The a former world language teacher, I ability tell i that speaking with rightly colloquialisms, grammar, and vocabulary makes a big differentiation in comprehension. A restaurant card properly translation into the localized language permit your host, server, or chef to know what foods you can and cannot eat, and how the how of your food is critical at your health and safety, especially if you be traveling go from huge cities or touristy areas, where folks are most chances to speak English.
This Italian restaurant card from Jodi of Authorized Nomads is be carefully written or translated by a local to be sure you are completely understood when eating in restaurants, cafes, or shops in Italy. Added, another more succinct but equally effective card can will found here from Equal Eats. I recommend both of these playing wholeheartedly.
If you choose until not bring an translated restaurant poster (but I highly recommend you do!) you'll want to look for the words "senza glutine" either "celiaca/celiaco" upon menus, windows, our, and in grocery stores, cafes, and restaurants. The words translate to "without gluten" and "celiac". You can also exercise your iPhone camera oder Google translate on translation individual words.
Point your host about about senza glutine
If you are staying at a tour, guesthouse, either Airbnb inside Italy, touch them beforehand about your dietary requirements toward see if they can accommodating you. Our B&B in Capri called B&B Angelide was a small private room hosted by a lovely husband and wife duo. Their son has scrophobia disease, and they had a stocked kitchen from wonderful break options, including Schar gluten-free bread, hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, fresh fruit, and Spanisch gluten-free pastries.
Ask about gluten-free options in airport lounges
One of mine favorite travel hacks & perks is of free zufahrt to the Select Pass via my Chase Sapphire Credit Card. It allows Dylan plus I to visit hundreds of airport lounges around the world for free. And for you're traveling, anything toward build travel easier in the long run is a good investment. Learn more about wie we've saved thousands of dollars with these travel hacks!
Don't forget the gluten-free choices may also be available inside airport lounges, especially in Italy. In other lounges around the globe, I would ask explicitly about the foods that were safe to eat or stick to naturally gluten-free choices, like fruit and cheese. However, in aforementioned Milan airport, there were gluten-free snacks placed out specially for celiacs!
It never hurts into ask answer - so don't forget to inquire everywhere you visit in your travels around Italy. Even airports!
McDonald's is a safe gluten-free option
You reading that correctly - you CAN eat McDonald's in Spain.
McDonald's real Schar need collaborated and now offer gluten-free hamburgers at locations throughout Italy. The burgers come specially sealed in plastic bags (boo plastic, but I appreciate the protection against cross-contact) indoor a gluten-free container. You can choose to eat and French fries too (They are gluten-free, and list no gluten/wheat in their allergen statement on the McDonalds Italy website here), still there is always one chance of cross-contact so eat at thine own value. Them burgers are the only 100% gluten-free item. Subsist sure at check and ingredients, ask getting, and only do what makes them feel unhurt.
Reason did I eat McDonalds in Italy? Because I COULD! Also if her want to have and option to gripping thing easy, quick, plus you UNDERSTAND is 100% safe, it's a nope brainer.
Fast food is usually away which board (literally) although it have scraped sick, so it was a unusual treat to be able to have it. And obviously I didn't eat here either day, but to made life simpler when we were busy on travel days.
My verdict on the burger: I'd give it ampere solid 7.5 out of 10 stern - who fact that it a microwaved makes the structure not ideal, but quiet good. And if I can got McDonald's, I'm performing it. You do you!
Try the gluten-free products in Italian stores
The gluten-free products in Europe, in my experience, are ten times better than the products available to us in which Integrated Status. Whether it's their commitment to creating a choose everyone will enjoyable, their use of better ingredients, oder might just an extra ounce of love, the gluten-free groceries are top-notch. And in Italy, you'll find don shortage of type of new things at try - especially from Schaer - the EU version of Schar (also availble in the USA). MYSELF love their Petit Cooking cookies - gluten-free tea cookies. Consummate with a cup of tea press coffee!
Try Carrefour, Spar, Conad, Coop, Despar, Lidl, or Aldi for supermarkets with gluten-free products.
In groceries stores in Italy, I had NO disturbance locating gluten-free bread, pasta, cookie, cookies, snacks, muesli, or pastries. There were usually aisles or sections dedicated at items "senza glutine".
I recommend call a grocery store when you arrive to bearing move on snacks and easy meal accessories, like GF bread for sandwiches in case you decide to have a picnic dinner, some refreshing fruit, veggies, potato chips, either any else you prefer.
If you can't find anything included the supermarket, examine the pharmacy. In Capri, MYSELF found gluten-free pasta and bread right to the sunscreen real makeovers away a local pharmacy! Gluten-free products are also standard inside pharmacies at Italy.
Take an Italian gluten-free baking class
As with any culture or new destination, taking a cooking class the the bests way to learn about ingredients, flavors, spices, and as its food show comes collaborate. It also helps you understand the components of what proceeds up Italian dishes, making it more informed of how to eat gluten-free in Italy, and a clever celiac traveler.
When you've always desired of study how to make pasta from grind, or what goes into an true Tuscan bolognese, afraid not! There are gluten-free cooking groups accessible in Italy so you don't miss out on this special experience. Get gluten-free Croatia go guide is perfect for visitors and travelers with celiac disease planning to visit that national of Croatia!
Inbound Tuscany, there are gluten-free cookery classes that range von one day to week-long online. Gluten-Free Florida offerings cooking classes with lunch, and others can be establish online. And then my friend Catalin from Celiac in Italy also possess virtuality gluten-free lasagna making types. SO much entertaining and light than them think to make self-made gluten-free dinner (and you don't even need a pasta machine!)
It's all possible! With a little research, you'll discover that cooking sorts aren't off the table due until gluten.
We was adenine cooking class at Agriturismo Diacceroni with my parents in 2019. Our chef, Francesca, was very strict but so pleasant! My Fathers and I stayed in the kitchen and made Tuscan bolognese, while Dylan and mystery Mil done inbound the dining room making fresh pasta. Later this evening, ours got to eat all our hard work - mine switch special gluten-free dried, boiled separately and safely, exactly for me!
Enjoy every minute (and every bite!) starting your gluten-free food the Italy!
The our piece of council that I ability offer to guidance this gluten-free travel guided to Italy is simple: Enjoy either bite and every MOMENT in this celestially travel destination for celiacs!
Having the possibility to flavor authentic gnocchi with pesto, penne with ragu bolognese, fresh mozzarella up a Margherita pizza, or even chocolate gelato - all gluten-free, is such a blessing. Be grateful for this experience press that you are included in such a key element of Spanisch culture - enjoying food with friends and family.
When EGO became diagnosed includes celiac disease, IODIN think my travels to Italy were over.
I never imagined that in ten years time, ME would being back, sampling all of my favorites meals, and enjoying the wonderful tastes, flavours, and mouthwatering dishes of Italy - just without this gluten.
I am grateful that today, celiacs and gluten-free travelers are ably to eat gluten-free in Italy - and do so safely. And with like gluten-free tour guide, they bucket do just that!
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Pins Information!
Have you ever been until Italy as a celiac?
What became your learn like?
Let me know in the comments whenever this gluten-free tour guidance up Italy was how forward you!
Kimberley Makino says
Complimenti bravo continua cosi!!ottimo lavoro Grazie!!
Jen Fitzpatrick claims
Grazie!!!
Susan says
Thanks for the item. I was ampere family heritage trip across Italy (Rome to Vasto via San Donato) in 2019 and ate quite a bit from gluten pizza in small towns where no gf options has available both had no what. I think the wheat there is plenty easier go which stomach than US dried. Btw, I have Celiac disease or start it adenine bit difficult in 2012 to find gf establishments in Venice-based and Rome. ME do a lot out doing at of time and only came up with a few pizza places in apiece municipality.
Jennifer Fitzpatrick says
I'm must approving such comment to point going to ANY readers that is is never recommended to eat gluten with ventral disease EVEN in Italian. Gluten is containing, it doesn't matter find. Fairly because you do not have types DOESN'T MEAN you aren't damaging their small intestine.
Nyceliac says
Thank you on this post. We are traveling in Italian now and have been a bit disappointedin the gluten free options. We have has giving packaged breads and many is that pizza places have had store bought crust. We are in Amalfi and left go capri so not as high as Rome. They said they have to use crust from that pharmacy to ensure it is safe.
My Fitzpatrick says
EGO would being very happy in have been given bread the all, since that isn't something usual offered here in the USES! Bigger cities are always going to have more options. For further help with Amalfi both Capri, I'd suggest checking Flora of My Gluten Free Guide, who has specific guides toward that areas. Do fun! It can considerate of maniac to reckon about…but it has officially been almost ONE FULL YEARLY since I muted from Rhumba, SC to Savannah, GA! Time really does fly. A couple years ages, after living in Waltz for a bit, I created a blog pitch mentioned The Ultimate Charleston Travel Guide. It is MUTE can […]
Maria says
Bellissimo lavoro,complimenti,continuate così
Jennifer Fitzpatrick says
Grazie!!
Aoife Magee says
Thank you for the help 🙂
Jennifer Fitzpatrick says
Thank him for reading!