- Italian language and culture — and Italy itself as the destination for an exchange program — are among the most beloved by North American students.
- Since Roman times, Italy has been an exporter of civilization. Knowing Italian allows you to appreciate a treasury of human expression.
- According to UNESCO, over 60% of the world's art treasures are found in Italy. Artists such as Giotto, Michelangelo and Artemisia Gentileschi, among many others, were Italian.
- Italian literature boasts some of the world's most famous writers — Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Gaspara Stampa, Vittoria Colonna, Machiavelli, Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Elsa Morante and Umberto Eco, to name a few.
- Italy has been a pioneer in many scientific fields — think of Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Guglielmo Marconi, Maria Montessori and Rita Levi-Montalcini.
- The performing arts have received significant contributions from Italian musicians, playwrights and directors, e.g. Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Verdi, Dario Fo, Luigi Pirandello, Eleonora Duse and Tina Modotti.
- Italy has produced adventurous explorers like Marco Polo, Columbus, John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci, after whom America was named.
- Italy was one of the founding members of the European Common Market (Treaty of Rome, 1957), which has developed into the European Union.
- Italy is one of the top five economies in the world and a member of the G7 group
- Knowing Italian is very advantageous in several career fields — the culinary arts, music, design, fashion, manufacturing, electromechanical machinery, shipbuilding, space engineering, transportation equipment.
- Owing to the prominence of Italy in many fields, Italian words — such as crescendo, pizza, fresco and studio — are present in numerous languages.
- Emigration has made Italian one of the languages most widely spoken outside Europe.