Italians marked St Valentine's Day by feasting on home-made spaghetti before curling up in front of the telly to watch a romantic movie.
Many couples cooked together to seal their bond before tucking into a pasta dinner washed down by a bottle of red wine, experts say.
Spaghetti is the ideal dish because it is "much more suggestive and aphrodisiac than oysters," says pyschologist Monica Zentellini.
Ideally, the dinner ended with lovers sucking the same piece of spaghetti to join lips and kiss like a famous scene in Lady and the Tramp, she says. Then it's onto the sofa for a romantic film like Pretty Woman or One Fine Day, a meet-cute flic featuring George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Overall, belt-tightening seems to have been the order of day.
Italians shunned foreign love meccas like Paris and Vienna in favour of short trips to Italy's own favourites
like Florence and Venice. In Verona, the lovers' city immortalised by Shakespeare,the local Romeo and Juliet Club issued awards for the most fervent outpourings of passion.
This year's winner is a 23-year-old Brazilian whose love letter said, among other things, that she was "so happy that it feels like every cell in my body is lighting up a bright star."
The club received 5,000 letters this year, with many entries from Japan and China.
Juliet's House was open free as were museums around the country in the Italian government's first Art Lovers' Day.
Officials encouraged Italians to visit romantic shrines like Mantegna's Wedding Chamber in Mantua or homages to love like Botticelli's Birth of Venus in Florence's Uffizi Gallery, the smiling Etruscan statues at Rome's Etruscan museum or the statues of Eros and Aphrodite at the Archaeological Museum in Naples.
But culture seems to have lost out to shopping, even in a lean year such as this.
With budgets tight, figures show, Italians are stick to standard gifts like flowers, beauty products, jewelry,
chocolates. Sexy lingerie is still a winner - but nothing too naughty and pricey.
Men gave lovingly baked home-made cakes this year, along with a classic fall-back option, the wooly
sweater.
One novelty, in this World Cup soccer year, is that many women have chosen to give their partners a satellite subscription to watch all the footie they want. Despite lower disposable income keeping the majority at home, though, some Italians are determined to splash out.
Some five million couples spend about one billion euros on gifts and dinners, consumer protection bodies say.
Taking a dim view of the commercial orgy as usual, Italy's umbrella consumer association Intesa warns that
chocolate is hiked 750% in price just because it's heart-shaped.
The biggest price rises this year are for chocolate drops, cuddly toys, jewelry, perfumes, dinners, parties, romantic weekends and SMS text messages. Valentine's Day "is no longer a lovers' festival," Intesa thundered.
"It's been turned into a payola for shopkeepers, the only ones sure to get the gift they wanted."
Striking a different note of complaint, gay and lesbian couples said they felt left out of the celebrations.
"We want the next government to make a clear commitment to civil unions for stable couples," said activist body Arcigay, hitting a sore point of the centre-left opposition's wranglings over their electoral platform.
Consumer moans and gay protests didn't stop lovers from turning out in droves at St Valentine's birthplace at Terni in Umbria. The couples, all due to marry this year, vowed eternal love in front of the saint's tomb at a ceremony that takes place each year in the church where his bones are kept. "Man's inhumanity to Man is due to a lack of love," said the local bishop, Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, who officiates over the love vows. "St Valentine shows that love is a mystery that makes the world come alive."
Oscar-winning actor-director Roberto Benigni, who has shot many of his films at his new Terni studios, drew crowds with his impassioned reading of the Bible's Song of Songs.
"Jesus Christ is the inventor of love," the madcap comedian said, calling King Solomon's reputed work, "the Bible's sensual book." Soaring high above the crowds were four couples who hired a hot-air balloon to fly over the Alps.
One of the four was poised to pop the question after waiting for the effect of champagne and mountain views - Mt Blanc, the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa - on the object of his desire.
Italy's most famous sporting playboy, skiing legend Alberto Tomba, also got in on the act at the Turin Winter
Olympics - but it was one of his more innocent conquests. In a sponsored event, Tomba chose a fan for a treat dinner. The ex-Bomba from Bologna is known to be a big spaghetti fan but organisers wouldn't say whether they put the supposedly erotic dish on the menu.
