Why Italians Fear the Number 17, Not 13 — And the Dark Roman Reason Behind It

Sharing is caring!

In most of the world, 13 is the number of bad luck — avoided in hotels, dreaded on Fridays, quietly skipped in lift buttons. But in Italy, it’s 17 that sends a shiver down the spine.

Ask any Italian what day they dread above all others, and they won’t say Friday the 13th. They’ll say Friday the 17th. And once you know the reason, you’ll never look at a Roman numeral the same way again.

The Roman Numeral That Changed Everything

The answer is hiding in plain sight — carved into ancient monuments, stamped onto coins, etched across thousands of years of Italian history.

Seventeen in Roman numerals is XVII. Rearrange those letters, and you get VIXI. In Latin, vixi means “I have lived.” Past tense. Finished.

In ancient Rome, that phrase was carved onto gravestones as the final word on a life. Not “I am living” — but “I lived.” To a Roman, VIXI announced a death. And that grim association never quite left the Italian psyche.

For a civilisation that built the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and an empire that stretched across three continents, the Romans were surprisingly superstitious. They consulted omens before battles, read meaning into the flight of birds, and chose days carefully based on celestial signs. That a rearranged numeral could spell death was exactly the kind of thing that would haunt a Roman — and then every Italian who came after.

Friday the 17th — Italy’s Unluckiest Day

In most western countries, the unlucky combination is Friday the 13th. In Italy, it’s Friday the 17th.

Hotels across Italy quietly skip the 17th floor. Airlines assign seat numbers around row 17. Some apartment buildings jump straight from 16 to 18, as if 17 might somehow sneak up and cause trouble if acknowledged directly.

The fear even has a name: heptadecaphobia — from the Greek for seventeen. It’s not a fringe belief. It’s woven into the fabric of everyday Italian life, from construction schedules to business contracts to wedding dates.

Formula One fans may recall that the great Michael Schumacher refused to race under the number 17. Several Italian footballers have requested number changes when assigned a shirt bearing it. The dread is real, widespread, and entirely unselfconscious.

Why 13 Is Actually Lucky in Italy

Here’s the twist that surprises most visitors: in Italy, 13 is considered a lucky number.

Winning the football pools — il Tredici — literally translates as “the thirteen.” To score all thirteen correct results on the weekly pools was the dream of every Italian household for decades. Thirteen was your lucky break, your windfall, your moment of fortune arriving at last.

The contrast with the rest of Europe couldn’t be sharper. While Britain and France shunned 13 at the dinner table — a 13th guest was said to invite disaster — Italians were raising their glasses to it.

This reversal tells you something important about Italy: its superstitions didn’t import wholesale from northern Europe. They grew from the ground up, rooted in Roman and southern Mediterranean tradition, with their own internal logic and their own particular fears.

How the Fear of 17 Plays Out in Daily Life

Once you know what to look for, the absence of 17 becomes visible everywhere in Italy.

Look carefully at the numbered doors along an old Roman palazzo. Check the apartment listings in a Naples building. Glance at the floor buttons inside an older Florentine hotel lift. There’s often a gap — a small, telling silence where 17 should be.

Italian superstitions rarely exist in isolation. The fear of 17 sits alongside a whole constellation of protective beliefs — the evil eye that Italians take far more seriously than tourists expect, the red horn hung from the rear-view mirror, the rituals for warding off bad luck before a journey.

If you want to understand why Italians keep a cornicello in their car — and what happens if it breaks — you start to see a picture emerge: a culture that holds its superstitions lightly, with humour, but doesn’t entirely let them go.

What the Ancient Romans Left Behind

Italy is a country built on layers. Beneath every modern city is a Roman one. Beneath every modern piazza, an ancient forum. Beneath every cobblestone street, the ghost of an old Roman road.

It makes sense, then, that the ancient Romans’ relationship with death — obsessively documented, ceremonially precise, linguistically exact — left its mark on how modern Italians relate to bad luck and the unseen.

VIXI. I have lived. It’s carved into the oldest stones in the country, worn smooth by two thousand years of weather. And somehow, three millennia later, the number that spells it out still makes an Italian pause on a Friday morning.

That’s the remarkable thing about Italy. The past is never quite past. It lives on in the architecture, the food, the language — and yes, in the quiet unease that settles over a room when someone mentions the date and it’s the seventeenth.

Come and feel it for yourself.

You Might Also Enjoy

• The Italian Evil Eye Superstition Tourists Always Get Wrong
• Why Italians Keep a Red Horn in the Car — And What Happens If It Breaks
• Are There Any Cultural Taboos in Italy I Should Be Aware Of?

Plan Your Italy Trip

Ready to experience Italian culture first-hand? Visit our Italy trip planning guide — everything you need to plan an unforgettable journey, from north to south.

Sharing is caring!