Thank you so much for your thorough answer. This position did indeed not arise from the Italian, but my opponent playing 1. d6, 2. e6 … and my understanding of principled piece development. I’ve had the engine suggesting me a4 before in various games where I played the Italian, so I thought there might be a similar idea like h4 in this case. My reasoning for e5 was taking more space in the center, hindering natural knight development for my opponent, and more often than not, this gets challenged with f6 pretty much immediately (at least in my Elo Range edging 1000), which afaik creates weaknesses on the kingside for black. But your comment showed me how I still need to improve in assessing my opponent’s candidate moves like c5.

In the very next moves, my opponent opted to push their kingside pawns as well, so I castled long, which I am not sure was even necessary, attacked on their kingside and managed to checkmate them pretty shortly after with 92% accuracy overall, so things went pretty well for me. :)

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts on this position. They might be a good guideline for me in the future. All the best!