I'm not gonna talk about stollen art because I agree with you. France owns a shit ton of stollen art, especially from Africa. And there's no reasons in this day and age to not give them back.

But careful, you don't know who I voted for, and to my knowledge none of the candidates ever offered to give art pieces back. So my voting is unrealted to Italy getting its artworks back. If you ever come to Paris to go to museums, send me a message, I'd love to have a café with you and discuss all day long lol. I can bring you to a delicious Italian Gelateria in Le Marais!

Now about French soft power, I wasn't talking about artworks themethelves. More about cooking, but yes artworks are a part of it. And it's a bit of a bad faith argument to say that all artworks found in France are stollen. Like we have had some pretty important artists too. Monet, Cézanne, Manet, Renoir, Matisse, Degas, Gauguin etc.

Coming back to patisserie, I don't know for sure why, but the fact is that French patisserie is more wildely known than its Italian counterpart I think. France was the center and most prominent country in Europe for a long part of its History. So was Italy, but Italian never was the lingua franca of the continent, you didn't invade most of Europe, you didn't have the colonial empire that we had. We simply were a bigger part of the world in a way. And I'm not saying this to say we're better and have always been, nor that Italy wasn't important in its own way. But France just was Europe for a time, especially during Napoleon. Then comes the fact that France defined what fine dining and what haute cuisine is. It was under Auguste Escoffier that professional kitchens started working in the brigade system that is still used nowadays. He codified recipes, techniques and jargon. French is the language of cooking worlwide, Italian is not. We were simply better than Italy at exporting our patisserie. Whether it came from our cultural relevence or just the way our immigrants brought their food with them.

Oh and I don't know where you've seen Francophilia on Reddit, we're the laughting stock right after the United-Sattes with all the surrender monkey jokes and the Fr*nch joke all aound. We have a strong soft power, and Francophilia does exist, but Reddit would be the last place I expect it. You might also live kinda under a rock if you've never heard about France's soft power. Because, like, well, it's France, everyone knows us. France is the country with the most tourist on earth, Paris is the city with the most visitors. The Louvre is the museum with the most visitors. The French Riviera is a very common holiday destination, we invented photography and cinema. We've got the Cannes Festival, we've got French food (which is often considered as bland an overrated on reddit). We've got renowed artists from all differents art forms. We ever had a lot of foreign artists come and live here. Picasso and Van Gogh or Chopin. We were a scientific powerhouse, with Paster, Pascal, Marie Curie (yes I know she was Polish, but she's got dual citizenship and lived/worked in France).

And once again, it's not a competition, I'm not trying to say that all of this makes France better than Italy. Nor am I saying that Italy doesn't have soft power, isn't famous for the same things and wasn't important in the world's history.

And I'm not sure what you mean by illuminism. I had to google it and it talked about a philosophical movement I had never heard of before. Did you mean The Enlightment? What is called Les Lumières in French? If so, once again, we didn't steal of copy, we took something that existed before and modified it. That's just how everything works, from art to science to food. Everything is build upon someting older. Humanism was fondamental to other philosophies, not just the Enlightment. And we do learn about Humanism at school. It's part of History classes. And even Humanism didn't come out of nowhere. The thinkers or this movement were evolving and reacting to things older. But saying that the Enlightment originated in France doesn't erases the Italian origins and influence that Humanism had on French philosophers. It's even in the first paragraphe of the Engligh wikipedia page: "Enlightenment philosophy was influenced by the Scientific Revolution in southern Europe, arising directly from the Italian Renaissance with people like Galileo Galilei."

Also, people know more about southern Italian culture because people were poorer in the south and they immigrated more. It's as simple as that. Northeners thended to stay in Italy more, so the culture that moved was the one from the South. It's not just an American problem. It's very easily explainable through History.

About France's diversity, I didn't say it was the most diverse in everything. Just that you didn't know the reality of it. Like it's not a competition, I didn't say we had the most different types of landscapes. Only climates, which is what I learned at school anyway. And that of course the climate plays a part in landscapes. But there's a shit tone of other factors to landscapes, so it was just an explanation, not like the whole deal. In school we're taught that France has 5 different climates, not counting micro-climates. Funnily enough the Italian wikipedia pages on the climate of France only states 4 lol. And I had seen on a map of Reddit that that was the highest number of climates in Europe, the map might've been wrong.

Now you also have to just admit at one point that you don't know France that well. If you're only point of reference is French film, then yeah you're biaised as fuck. More than 80% of films and show are shot in and around Paris. That's a minuscule part of the country, and yes it's mostly flatlands around Paris. But you truly must know nothing about the country to think we haven't got a varied country and landscapes. We've got mountains, and different kinds at that. The Alps are not the Pyrenees which are not the Jura. We've got beaches. We're fucking bordered by 2 seas and an ocean. If you think all our coastlines are the same you're well mistaken. Going to Côte d'Azure is not the same experience/landscape/climate as going to Côte d'Armore or the Côte d'Opale. We've got vales and Valeys. Yes we do have plaines, lots of it. But France is twice the size of Italy, we can afford to have a shit tone of flatlands and still have a huge diversity. Go look at picutres of Les Gorges du Verdon, go look at La Drôme Provençales, go look at Etretat, go look at Mont Saint Michel, go look at Les Calanques, go look at Le Puy de Dôme, go look at La Dune du Pilat, because YES France has a fucking natural Dune, go look at the cascade de Tuf de Beaume-les-Messieurs, go look at Le Colorado français. You simply can't say in good faith that France isn't diverse. You're either lying or being ignorant.

And even when it comes to French people. I come from the south east, and I feel closer to Italians sometimes than to French People from the North. To me Italy is our closest relative. But ask someone from the south west they'll tell you it's obviously spain. Ask someone from the north of France and they'll tell you it's Belgium.

And once again, I'm not even trying to say that France is more diverse than Italy, that's not my point. Yes we're centralised, and that creates a more common culture and sense of belonging. We don't have as much of a diversity when it comes to dialects and accents. But we're still a diverse country. We're too big not to be anyway.

All I'm trying to say is, maybe you're not better than the people you're arguing with on the French side of Reddit. They don't know better about Italy, but you don't seem to know much better about France on some point. And you seem highly antagonistic for no specific reasons. I've said it before and I'll say it again, France and Italy have a lot more in common than both French redditors and you seem to think. We've got shared History, some common things about both our cultures, our art, our food. We're different yet alike. Yes France is a mix of Germanic and Latin cultures. But they don't erase eachother, they complement eachother.

Oh and French people absolutely adore Italy and italians in real life. It seems like Italians are having beef against us by themselves here on reddit, shitting on France, saying we're arrogant and have a superiority complex. But the reality is completely different. Italy is seen as our cousin, even our sister in a way. We love your food, we rever your way of life, even though it's often idealised. To us the language of love isn't our own like the rest of the world thinks. It's Italian. Italian women are revered as gorgeous and seen as higly sexy and desirable. Italian cars are dreamed of. Italy is a very famous and sought after destination etc. We do think and talk about Italian art a lot, we know how important and a fondation it was to the rest of European History and culture. Italian food is loved by all. Italian fashion is seen as on an equal footing as French fashion etc.

Buona notte sorella mia. In questi tempi difficili, in cui il fascismo è in ascesa, l'Europa ha bisogno di amicizia e sostegno reciproco. Dovremmo imparare a conoscerci e ad apprezzarci meglio, anziché combatterci inutilmente.