Italian Family Traditions
Italian Lucky and Unlucky Numbers: Why 13 Is Good Fortune and 17 Is the One to Fear
Most people avoided the number 13 without knowing why they avoided it. My grandparents knew exactly why they didn’t — and quietly took advantage of it. Empty hotel rooms. Open tables. A number nobody else wanted, sitting there for the taking.
⏱ 6 minute read
📋 What you will learn in this post
- Why 13 is considered lucky in Italy — the opposite of most Western cultures
- Why 17, not 13, is the number Italians actually fear
- Where these beliefs came from — Roman numerals, ancient goddesses, and the Last Supper
- Other numbers that carry meaning in Italian family life
- How these number superstitions traveled to Italian-Canadian households
Table of Contents
- Why 13 is lucky in Italy
- The secret advantage — using 13 when others wouldn’t
- Why 17 is the number Italians actually fear
- Other numbers that carry meaning
- The connection to la smorfia
- Number superstitions in Italian-Canadian families
- FAQ
Most travelers learn quickly that hotels skip the 13th floor, that some buildings go straight from 12 to 14, that an entire Western superstition machine has built itself around one unlucky number. What they do not learn, unless someone tells them, is that in Italy the math runs in the opposite direction. Thirteen is not the number anyone is avoiding. Seventeen is.
My grandparents understood this completely, and they understood something else too — that most people around them, including other Italians who had absorbed North American superstitions without questioning them, still treated 13 as cursed. A hotel room numbered 13 sat empty while everyone else avoided it. A restaurant table for 13 went unrequested. My grandparents took both, quietly, without explanation, the same way they took the good tomatoes nobody else had noticed yet. They were not being reckless. They knew something the room did not.
Why 13 is lucky in Italy
While most of the Western world fears 13, Italian lucky numbers work in reverse — Italy has treated 13 as a number of good fortune for centuries.
The Italian Jewelry Company traces the origins of 13’s positive reputation in Italy to ancient pagan beliefs and goddess worship — the number corresponds to the lunar calendar’s thirteen cycles each year, representing fertility, renewal, and the Great Goddess, a powerful symbol of life and creation in ancient Italian traditions. That connection to feminine energy and abundance solidified 13 as a fortunate number long before Christianity arrived to reframe it elsewhere.
The belief got a significant modern boost from an unexpected source: football. Eredi Jovon explains that the Totocalcio football pools betting system, which started in Italy in 1946, popularized the phrase ho fatto tredici — “I’ve made thirteen” — meaning a stroke of luck, entering the collective imagination so thoroughly that Italian comedies and sketches have been built around the fantasy of the winning thirteen ticket.
The contrast with the rest of the Western world could not be sharper. Mr and Mrs Romance notes that most Western cultures inherited their fear of 13 from the Last Supper, where Judas Iscariot was the thirteenth guest, or from older Norse mythology. Italy absorbed some of that influence too — but never as completely, and never displacing the older, friendlier association with the number.
The secret advantage — using 13 when others wouldn’t
While other people quietly avoided 13 without knowing why, my grandparents understood it as the opposite — and used that gap to their advantage.
This was never discussed as a strategy. It was simply how they moved through the world. If a hotel offered room 13 because nobody else wanted it, they took it without hesitation — and often without comment, because there was nothing to explain. If a restaurant had a table for thirteen sitting open while parties of twelve waited elsewhere, that was simply where you sat. The number that made other people uneasy was, to them, just a number. Better than a number, even — a small piece of inherited good fortune that almost nobody else in the room knew they were holding.
There was something quietly satisfying about watching other people hesitate at a door or a table because of a superstition my grandparents simply did not share. They never made a show of it. They never explained the Italian belief to anyone who flinched at the number. They just walked in, sat down, and got on with things — carrying a piece of old-world knowledge that worked in their favor precisely because nobody around them had bothered to ask where their own superstition actually came from.
That small advantage — knowing something the room did not — is one of the quieter pleasures of carrying an inherited culture. Most heritage traditions ask something of you. This one occasionally gave something back, in the form of an empty hotel room or an open table at a restaurant everyone else assumed was full.
Why 17 is the number Italians actually fear
If Italian lucky numbers put 13 in positive territory, what is Italy actually worried about? Seventeen — and the reason is a Latin anagram carved on gravestones.
The explanation is consistent across every source on Italian superstition: in Roman numerals, 17 is written XVII. Rearrange those letters and you get VIXI — Latin for “I have lived,” a phrase historically carved on Roman gravestones to mean, essentially, “my life is over.” Learn Italian Pod documents this directly, noting the belief is sometimes called “il malocchio del 17” — the evil eye of 17.
The Italian Jewelry Company notes the practical consequences are visible if you know where to look: hotels commonly skip room 17 the way North American buildings skip the 13th floor, some elevators jump straight from 16 to 18, and certain Alitalia aircraft have reportedly omitted row 17 entirely. The superstition is taken seriously enough to show up in actual infrastructure decisions, not just casual conversation.
And when 17 lands on a Friday, the dread compounds. ISI Florence explains that Friday carries its own weight in Italian Catholic tradition as Venerdì Santo — the day associated with the death of Jesus. Combine the day already linked to death with a number already linked to death, and you get Friday the 17th: the genuine date Italians treat with caution, the one they might avoid for travel, weddings, or major decisions — while Friday the 13th passes by completely unremarkable, sometimes even viewed as an especially fortunate day.
🇮🇹 Did you know? VIXI — “I have lived” — was a common epitaph on Roman gravestones. The phrase that made 17 unlucky in Italy is literally the same phrase carved into ancient tombstones nearly two thousand years ago.
Other numbers that carry meaning
Thirteen and seventeen get the attention in Italian lucky and unlucky numbers tradition, but they are not the only numbers Italian families paid attention to.
| Number | Meaning in Italian tradition |
|---|---|
| 13 | Lucky — linked to the lunar calendar, the Great Goddess, fertility, and the modern Totocalcio “ho fatto tredici” association with winning |
| 17 | Unlucky — XVII rearranges to VIXI, “I have lived,” a phrase tied to death and Roman gravestones |
| 3 | Lucky — tied to the Holy Trinity in Christian tradition. Understanding Italy notes many believe making a wish three times increases the chance it comes true |
| 8 | Associated with infinity and abundance due to its shape, considered a fortunate number in numerology traditions that influenced Italian folk belief |
| Even numbers of flowers | Traditionally avoided as gifts — even numbers, particularly arrangements, are associated with funerals in Italian custom. Odd numbers are given instead. |
These smaller beliefs rarely got formal explanations in Italian households. You simply learned that flowers came in odd numbers, that three wishes were better than one, that an offhand mention of the number 17 might prompt a slight pause in conversation. The logic behind each one was rarely spoken aloud. It did not need to be.
The connection to la smorfia
Italian lucky and unlucky numbers do not exist in isolation. They are part of a much larger system — the same one that produced la smorfia.
La smorfia — the Neapolitan dream book that assigns a number to nearly everything a person might dream about — is built on the same instinct that makes 13 lucky and 17 unlucky: the belief that numbers are not neutral, that they carry meaning, memory, and consequence beyond their simple mathematical value. A family that watched its dreams for numbers worth playing in the lottery was operating from the exact same worldview as a family that quietly took the empty hotel room numbered 13.
Both systems treat numbers as carriers of fortune rather than abstractions. Both were taken seriously without ever being treated as formal religion. And both survived the crossing to North America largely intact, passed down the same way most Italian folk belief was passed down — through repeated small example rather than explicit instruction.
Number superstitions in Italian-Canadian families
Italian lucky numbers and the beliefs around them did not need a special occasion to survive immigration. They traveled in everyday decisions — hotel rooms, restaurant tables, flower arrangements.
Number superstitions are some of the easiest folk beliefs to carry across a border because they require nothing beyond paying attention. No garden, no specific ingredient, no annual ritual that needs organizing. Just a quiet awareness, present in the background of ordinary life, that some numbers mean something and some do not.
In Italian-Canadian households in Montreal, this showed up in small, almost invisible ways. A grandmother who insisted on odd-numbered flower arrangements without ever explaining why to her Canadian-born grandchildren. A grandfather who took the room or the table numbered 13 without hesitation while Canadian friends visibly relaxed once they realized they would not be sitting at an “unlucky” table after all — not realizing the actual unlucky number, in the tradition their host carried, was an entirely different one. These small moments of cultural difference rarely became conversations. They were simply lived, generation after generation, without fanfare.
That quiet confidence — knowing a belief system different from the one surrounding you, and trusting it enough to act on it without explanation — connects to the same spirit found in malocchio and the broader world of Italian protective folk belief. For the broader story of what Italian families carried with them after leaving Italy, read Italian-American traditions: what changed and what stayed.
If you want to carry the number 13 forward the way my grandparents did — quietly, with a bit of inherited confidence — a traditional Italian lucky 13 charm is a small, specific way to wear a belief that goes against almost everyone else’s instinct, the same way the cornicello protects against the malocchio.
Most people avoided the number 13 without knowing why they avoided it. My grandparents knew exactly why they didn’t — and quietly took what everyone else left behind. An empty hotel room. An open table. A number nobody else wanted, sitting there for the taking. They never explained it. They never needed to. They just knew something the room did not.
Italian number superstitions belong to the same folk belief system as malocchio and la smorfia. For the broader story of what Italian families carried after immigration, read Italian-American traditions: what changed and what stayed. And for the folk health beliefs that worked in a similar logical system, read about the colpo d’aria.
📌 Quick summary
- Italian lucky numbers start with 13 — tied to ancient goddess worship, fertility, and the modern Totocalcio lottery tradition
- 17 is unlucky — XVII rearranges to VIXI, “I have lived,” historically a death-associated epitaph
- Friday the 17th, not Friday the 13th, is the date Italians actually treat with caution
- 3 is lucky too — tied to the Holy Trinity, used for wishes made three times
- The belief system connects directly to la smorfia and malocchio — numbers carry meaning beyond math
FAQ
Why is 13 considered lucky in Italy?
Italian lucky numbers trace back to ancient pagan tradition — the Italian Jewelry Company notes that 13 corresponds to the lunar calendar’s thirteen cycles per year and was associated with the Great Goddess, fertility, and renewal. In modern Italy, the belief was reinforced by the Totocalcio football pools betting system, which began in 1946 and popularized the phrase “ho fatto tredici” — “I’ve made thirteen” — to mean a stroke of good luck. Unlike most of the Western world, which inherited a fear of 13 from the Last Supper and other traditions, Italy largely retained its older, more positive association with the number.
Why is 17 unlucky in Italy?
Understanding Italian lucky and unlucky numbers starts with Roman numerals — 17 is written XVII. Rearranged, those letters spell VIXI — Latin for “I have lived,” a phrase historically used as an epitaph on Roman gravestones to indicate that a life had ended. Learn Italian Pod documents this belief as “il malocchio del 17” — the evil eye of 17. The association with death has made 17 the number Italians actually avoid, to the point that some hotels skip room 17, some elevators jump from 16 to 18, and certain airlines have reportedly omitted row 17 from their seating.
Is Friday the 13th unlucky in Italy?
No — and this is one of the clearest examples of Italy diverging from broader Western superstition. Italians generally go about Friday the 13th without extra caution, and some even see it as a particularly fortunate day given the number’s positive associations. The date Italians actually treat with caution is Friday the 17th, which combines the unlucky number 17 with Friday’s association in Catholic tradition with the crucifixion — creating, as ISI Florence describes it, two unlucky elements compounding into one feared date.
What other numbers are significant in Italian tradition?
Beyond 13 and 17, the number 3 holds particular significance, tied to the Holy Trinity in Christian tradition, with the folk belief that making a wish three times increases the likelihood it comes true. Even numbers of flowers are traditionally avoided as gifts in Italian custom, since even-numbered arrangements are associated with funerals — odd numbers are given instead for celebratory occasions. These smaller number beliefs operate on the same underlying logic as the more famous ones: certain numbers carry meaning and consequence beyond their simple mathematical value.
How does la smorfia connect to Italian number superstitions?
La smorfia, the traditional Neapolitan dream book, assigns specific numbers to common dream subjects and objects, operating on the same fundamental belief that drives Italian lucky numbers broadly: that numbers are not neutral and carry meaning beyond mathematics. A family watching for lucky numbers to play in the lottery based on what they dreamed was working from the same worldview as a family that understood 13 to be fortunate rather than cursed. Both systems treat numbers as carriers of fortune, memory, and consequence.
Did Italian-Canadian families keep these number beliefs after immigration?
Italian lucky numbers traveled with their families, often without ever formally discussing it. Because number superstitions require no garden, no specific ingredient, and no annual ritual to maintain, they were among the easiest pieces of Italian folk belief to carry across a border intact. In Italian-Canadian households, this showed up in small, often unspoken ways — taking a hotel room or restaurant table numbered 13 without hesitation, choosing odd numbers of flowers as gifts, or noting a quiet unease around the number 17 that Canadian-born family members did not always understand the origin of.
Why do Italians believe 13 brings luck while most cultures fear it?
The divergence comes down to which historical influence took deeper root. Much of the Western world’s fear of 13 traces to the Last Supper, where Judas Iscariot was traditionally counted as the thirteenth guest, alongside older Norse mythological traditions. Italy was exposed to these same influences but never fully displaced its older, pre-Christian association between 13 and the lunar calendar, fertility, and the Great Goddess. That older belief, reinforced in the 20th century by the popular Totocalcio lottery phrase “ho fatto tredici,” kept 13 firmly in positive territory in Italian culture even as the same number became feared elsewhere.
💬 Did your family have number superstitions? Did your grandparents avoid 17, take advantage of 13, or have a rule about flowers or wishes you never quite got the full explanation for? Leave a comment below — these are exactly the kinds of details worth writing down before they’re forgotten.
Marco Ricci is an Italian-Canadian writer and the grandson of Calabrian immigrants. He created Italian Family Traditions to document the customs, feast days, and family rituals Italian families carried from Italy to North America — and to understand what they actually meant. He is based in Montreal.
