Drinking water in Italy
Drinking water in Italy is cool, safe and readily available everywhere. And in some parts of Italy you can still see people gathering around the local water well.
Free drinking water is a human right in most developed countries, and Italy makes no exception. Thanks to the mountains, clean drinking water is abundant and relatively available across most regions. The processing and cleaning standards are as good as any in Europe. Only bad luck and/or private storage in unclean pipes and reservoirs will make you sick from drinking water in Italy.
Still, tap water – even when supplied through the water grid – may not taste particularly nice and it can give you stomach cramps. In consequence, most people spend a small fortune buying bottled water.
Public Water Fountains
A cheap alternative to bottled water runs from public water fountains that can be found in all towns and villages. This water is free, tasteless, drinkable (potabile) and readily available from marked water posts everywhere. And it is safe for tourists to stop and take a drink or fill up their drinking bottles from these fountains instead of carrying bottled water around.
In the south, you’ll also see locals driving up with a dozen containers and vessels of varying sizes to take the free, portable water home and use for cooking and drinking. It goes to show that some Europeans still meet around the local water well.
This post was last updated in September 2018
Other post like drinking water in Italy
Italian Christmas celebrations
Italian Notes
My tap in Florence tastes great! We were in Rifredi before and it has way too much chlorine to handle.
I finally found a restaurant by lo Stadio that serves tap water in a nice bottle rather than buying Panna or whatever else.
Back to your point, we are very luck to have water fountains all throughout for everyone to take advantage of a basic human right.
In the Puglian country side we are outside the water grid, so we have the choice of buying bottled water or tanking from the free communal well.
This is so true, across the street at home I have a “fontanella” the italian word for a small water fountain and I must say that water is excellent. Then in Amiata we use to bring “damigiane” which are the vessels and we will fill them up to bring home. I miss Italian water sometimes. Thank You for writing about it! Everybody should know about the delicious water we have.
The potable water fountains around Italian cities are so quaint. Such a simple thing that we often take for granted. I particularly remember the water fountains in Piazza San Marco in Firenze as well as the ones in Piazza del Campo in Siena.
That was a common sight in my recent trip to Lucca in Tuscany. It seemed like the thing to do, so I ended up joining them, even though the tap water tasted fine. When in Rome…
In Acquaseria on Lake Como our tap water is wonderful. Also, the comune have invested in a water dispenser machine on the main road, at which, for the princely sum of 5cents, you can get 1.5 liters of delicious carbonated water. So much better than buying commercial mineral water, which may have been sitting in a plastic bottle for weeks or even months.
Makes me wonder – with all the fresh mountain water we have in Norway, why don’t we have public water fountains…
I noticed this too during my trip to Italy. Italians are lucky to have free flow of clean drinking water unlike most other countries.
You’re right. Clean water is an necessity we too often take for granted.
Do they have public drinking fountains in the villages around italy too or just the centre of cities and towns?
Every village, however small, has a fountain. The only place you rarely find them is in the countryside.
Loved the public fountains when I was there. My husband thinks Rome had the best water.
Yes, it’s nice to be able to drink from an old scuplture.
What about the tap water near Naples? I’ve read a lot about ground contamination from illegal burying of toxic waste and many reports of cancer among the locals who drink the water.
I’ve read that too, and I’d never drink water from a private tap, but public fountains ie. the taps in the streets are different, I hope. At least the authorities seem to keep an eye on health and safety and close down supplies that are contaminated. Apart from that the toxic waste is not just polluting the water, but also vegetables, dairy products and other produce, so from what I’ve heard it’s hard to identify the exact source of the high cancer rates. At least that’s the story in the province of Taranto, where there are similar problems to those in Naples.
I went to Italy and it’s important to mention that people who’s stomachs get upset easily, should really stick to drinking bottled water. Though most bottled water is mixed with tapwater, you can taste the chlorine in it. So it’s not even ultimately clean, but still better than tapwater. There’s different minerals in the tapwater and wáy more calcium, so if there’s kidneystones in the family, buy bottled water, just to be sure. It’s cheap anyway.
I avoided the tapwater in Rome for about 4 days, knowing it’d probably get my stomach upset, but then someone who thought I was being rude, convinced me to drink it anyway. I had one glass of water, right before going to bed, which tasted like drinking from a pool, due to the chlorine.
The next day I woke up and I’m not joking, it felt like my insides were ripping apart.
I wasn’t vomiting, no toilet-issues, just awfull pain in my stomach and a slight fever.
It changed after about an hour, reducing itself to ‘just annoying stomachpain.’
And so I spend the rest of the holiday and the week after the holiday (in total, 12 days) with stomach-pain. It wasn’t food poisoning, because in that case, I would’ve had toilet-issues.
So, I don’t want to offend any Italians here. But if you have an easily upset stomach, the Italian water is nót good for you.
Thanks for sharing your experience with drinking water in Italy. And just to make things clear: I don’t recommend the consumption of water directly from tap. You never know what kind of well and pipes it comes from and it often tastes of chlorine. In Italy, the alternative to bottled water is water from the public fountain. This is free, drinkable (potabile) and readily available from marked water posts everywhere. Therefore you often see Italians lined up around the water fountain waiting to fill their big plastic containers with clean water for cooking and drinking.
Rosa you probably ate something because our water is safe and considered one of the best in Europe (check on google). The quality of public water in France or UK is far worse. No to mention US where I wouldn’t recommend to drink it.