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To be born male and Italian is to have won first prize in the Lottery of Life. This is one of nature’s incontrovertible truths. In the wholly anecdotal science of social Darwinism, Italian men are at the top of the tree. They’ve got it all pretty much sorted if national evolution is a matter of being opportunistic in a labyrinth of choices. Then the chaps from Europe’s boot, more by luck than judgment, have ended up with all the prizes.

Of course, being born an Italian woman is a crying shame. It’s not just being constantly pursued by men who think that love and lying are synonymous, or that however much they adore you, it’ll never come close to what they think of their mothers. It’s that for your whole life you’re going to be in competition with men who are better at being a woman than you are.

It’s only Italian men that unite Italy from the Alps to Syracuse. They are an immediately identifiable homogenous clan. You can spot an Italian man in a crowd of other Europeans from 50 yards. It’s not just the cashmere thing, or the Todd’s loafers thing, or the fact that he’s shrieking with high-pitched hilarity in to a mobile phone. It’s that he looks like a chap who was born wearing life’s blue rosette on his bottom.

As for the rest of Italy, well frankly it’s a mess. It barely counts as a country. Indeed, only non-Italians consider it a country. Most Milanese think they have more in common with suede than they do with Neapolitans. Ask an Italian were he comes from and he won’t say Italy. He’ll say Genoa, the Veneto, Rome, Sardinia. Italy is a conspiracy. Italy is a cover story. If there wasn’t Italy, then there couldn’t be any Italian government, and if there were no Italian government then there couldn’t be any fraud, tax evasion, grand theft or nepotism. And what would be the point of being an Italian without fraud, tax evasion, theft and nepotism?

You’ll have noticed that Italians laugh a lot. They seem to be able to wear life as a loose overcoat, but it might surprise you to know that Italians have no sense of humour. Absolutely none at all. What they have is a highly developed sense of fun. For an Italian, everything is very serious, from economic policy to Parmesan. All has equal importance. The pleasure is in understanding that and then being naughty. Naughtiness is what Italians have instead of all the other sins. For them the Second World War was very naughty. Stealing all of Europe’s money for Olive Trees that don’t exist is a little bit naughty. Sleeping with your father’s nurse is blissfully naughty.

Travelling to Italy is probably the most effervescent and liberating thing that northern Europeans can do. The best bit is that you don’t have to stay. Visiting Italy is to get a glimpse of a heavenly crèche with fun and naughtiness and flirtation and food.

The thought of living there is to glimpse purgatory. The very idea of having to buy somewhere, to get a phone installed, to register a car, to start a business. Italy refined bureaucratic torture to an art form 400 years ago. Nothing gets done in Italy. That, of course, is part of its pleasure. Doing something new would mean undoing something old, and that would be a mistake.

The creation of Italy as a unified country by Garibaldi in the middle of the last century liberated the Italians from everything but their history. This is truly a country that has a marvellous future behind it, and to be fair Italians make a virtue of necessity. They do everything they can to make progress impossible. They have invented the slow food movement for longer lunches, and then, encouraged by its perennial success, have widened it to a slow city movement. Again this is marvellous to visit. It would be hell to live in for anyone born north of Trieste.

To call anything other than a man Italian is to fail to grasp this boot. Everything is regional, provincial, civic, local. Nowhere in Europe has such a diverse range of regional cuisines. For instance, an Italian restaurant could only exist outside Italy. Food is, more than anywhere else, a statement of belonging. The basil of Genoa, the veal chop of Tuscany, the tripe of Florence, the liver and onions of Venice. Local people give allegiance to these things and their local wines way before they do to the flag or some bit of Pucci-ish national anthem.

Italy is ungovernable so no one seriously tries. Italians would rather see blonde girls with big breasts in power than serious politicians with plans, and this can mean that the naughtiness can get out of control and become frightening. During the 70s, Italy came this close to complete anarchy and mayhem. It was a frightening and angry place to be. Italians have an anger to match the fun. But today Italy is fat and happy and vain and languorous.

If I had to choose one thing to see, one place to go before I died, I think it would be the Palio in Siena, the medieval horse race around the most perfectly beautiful city square ever built. It has everything that is both simultaneously best and worst in Italy. It’s ancient without being self consciously a recreation. It’s highly emotional, it’s vicious and it is intrinsically corrupt. Indeed the race can’t start until the last rider has been sufficiently bribed. It takes three hours of argument and bluster to start and is all over in two minuets. It�s perfect.

And if you wanted an image of what Italy is like, a metaphor for this country, then appropriately enough you could do worse than the last scene of 'The Italian Job'. The bus is hanging over a precipice with a lot of men arguing up one end, and immense riches pulling them over the edge at the other.

Read more travel writing by AA Gill