Foodie Theme Park to Open in Italy Next Fall

The world’s first gourmet theme park, ​“FICO Eataly World,” will open in Italy in September 2017. Eataly’s 20-acre Disneyland of Italian din­ing will sprawl across Bologna’s coun­try­side aim­ing to attract six mil­lion Italian food lovers annu­ally. Visitors to Eataly World will dis­cover the secrets and tra­di­tions of Italian food pro­duc­tion, pro­cess­ing and cook­ing.

Eataly World will be a fusion of enter­tain­ment, edu­ca­tion and food. Visitors will be able to observe graz­ing live­stock and savor over 10,000 square meters of flora and fauna includ­ing; olive groves and orchards with trees bear­ing aubergines, mel­ons and almonds.

Thrill-seek­ing gas­tron­o­mists can hop on one of the 500 Bianchi tri­cy­cles com­plete with shop­ping bas­kets to explore the com­plex and gather up gourmet good­ies from the 9,000-square-foot food mar­ket. The cherry on the con­nois­seur’s cake is a choco­late foun­tain.

Eataly World will have six main areas to explore; fish, meat and eggs, milk and dairy pro­duce, cere­als, fruit and veg­eta­bles, drinks and dress­ings and desserts. 40 dif­fer­ent work­shops will show­case ​“from the field to the fork” processes includ­ing the pro­duc­tion of oils and wines.

You can’t bathe in a lagoon of olive oil at Eataly World but you can immerse your­self in six vir­tual real­ity expe­ri­ences or drown your sor­rows in the beer fac­tory. A trip to the foodie fan­tasy land is guar­an­teed to whet your appetite. You can dine in one of Eataly World’s 25 restau­rants; after an aper­i­tif and ​“chin-chin” in one of its three bars.

Eataly World aims to bring food­ies together to eat shop and learn. The theme park’s CEO Tiziana Primori explained, ​“Our vision for FICO Eataly World is an immense and joy­ous place where every­one can dis­cover Italy’s great her­itage. There will be no place in Italy or the world, where you can see and explore this wide range of food pro­cess­ing and cook­ing in a sin­gle loca­tion.”

Eataly World is not the Italian food emporium’s first voy­age beyond met­ro­pol­i­tan mega­s­tores. In 2013 Eataly took to the seas open­ing restau­rants on Italian cruise ships MSC Preziosa and MSC Divina.

Eataly was founded by Italian Oscar Farinetti. He announced his vision of ​‘Eat Italy’ over Sunday lunch in 2003. Farinetti opened his first Eataly in Turin in 2007. One and a half mil­lion cus­tomers flocked to Farinetti’s out­let in the first six months.

Eataly now has over 27 mega­s­tores around the world in; Italy, Japan, Turkey, Dubai, Brazil, South Korea and the U.S. Eataly’s Italian mar­ket­places have become tourist attrac­tions as well as gourmet food halls on par with the likes of Harrods.

Farinetti aspired ​“to make high-qual­ity Italian foods avail­able to every­one at fair prices and in an envi­ron­ment where peo­ple can shop, taste and learn.” Eataly’s del­i­ca­cies include almost 100 vari­eties of Italian extra vir­gin olive oil, many from smaller, tra­di­tional farms.

Farinetti believes, ​“the oppor­tu­nity to shop, eat and learn at the same time has made cus­tomers fall in love with Eataly. Before Eataly, there had never been a for­mat that pro­posed these three activ­i­ties in the same big place, open to every­body.”

If a day at Eataly World is not enough to sati­ate your hunger for Italian fare, a 200-room hotel will be added in 2018.

Two thou­sand busi­nesses, includ­ing small com­pa­nies deliv­er­ing high-qual­ity prod­ucts, will be rep­re­sented at Eataly World. The eco-friendly project (which has suf­fered two years of delays) incor­po­rates reclaimed wood and 44,000 solar pan­els (the most on a sin­gle European prop­erty). The project has cost €100 mil­lion and is expected to cre­ate 700 jobs onsite.

Admission to Eataly World is free.

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