Shape: Rigatoni. Sicily’s Timeless Tubular Pasta

When you think of Sicilian pasta, your mind probably jumps to baked trays of pasta al forno, bubbling with ragù and cheese, or Sunday dishes where the sauce has been on the stove longer than anyone in the house has been awake. Look closely at a lot of those plates and you’ll see the same silhouette: short, ridged tubes with blunt edges and serious attitude.

That’s rigatoni.

In much of southern Italy, especially Sicily and Basilicata, these big, ridged tubes sit right at the heart of home cooking. Some producers and food writers even point to Sicily and Basilicata as rigatoni’s original territory, before it spread across central and southern Italy and became welded to Roman cooking too. Valdigrano+2Encyclopedia Britannica+2

Officially, books will tell you rigatoni is “associated with the cuisine of central and southern Italy, particularly loved in Sicily.” Wikipedia Unofficially, walk into a Sicilian kitchen on a feast day and try to argue that this shape is anything but family.

The Origins of Rigatoni

Rigatoni belongs to a family of pasta that could only really exist once Italy got serious about extrusion.

Sicily was one of the earliest powerhouses of dried durum wheat pasta in Europe, thanks to its climate and Arab-influenced techniques for making and drying long-lasting shapes. Tuscookany+1 Over centuries, those methods evolved from hand-rolled strands and sheets into more complex forms, including hollow tubes.

The name rigatoni comes from rigato – “ridged” or “lined” – with the augmentative suffix -one: literally “the big ridged ones.” Wikipedia+1 The ridges aren’t cosmetic. They’re the whole point.

Where things get messy (in a good way) is the question of birthplace. Some brands and Italian sources claim rigatoni “originated in Sicily and Basilicata,” then spread to central Italy. Valdigrano Others insist it was “born in Rome,” later adopted with enthusiasm further south, especially in Sicily. DeLallo+2Emilia's Crafted Pasta+2

What we can say without lying to ourselves is this:

• The technology and culture of dried tubular pasta are very strong in Sicily and the broader Mezzogiorno. food-info.net+1

• The name and classic ridged tube we now call rigatoni took shape with 19th–20th century extrusion and slow drying, then became a signature of both Roman and southern home cooking. Encyclopedia Britannica+1

So this isn’t a simple “Rome invented it, Sicily copied it” story. It’s more honest to say: rigatoni is a central–southern shape, but in Sicily it feels like it never left.

The Story of Rigatoni in Sicily

In Sicilian homes, rigatoni feels less like a product and more like infrastructure. It’s what you reach for when you need a pasta that can stand up to slow ragù, long baking, sharp cheeses, and family appetites.

It shows up:

• At Sunday lunch, drowned in ragù Siciliano – beef, pork, maybe a bit of sausage – cooked for hours until the sauce becomes memory more than recipe.

• In weeknight bowls, tossed with tomatoes, garlic, basil, and a fast grating of pecorino or caciocavallo.

• In pasta al forno, layered with sauce, cheese, sometimes peas, hard-boiled eggs or fried aubergine, then baked until the top is blistered and the sides are caramelised.

Rigatoni’s shape is doing serious work here. The hollow centre hoards sauce. The ridges catch gratings of cheese, flecks of sausage and breadcrumbs. Those blunt-cut edges scrape and drag flavour with every bite.

In Sicily, people still say maccheroni as a catch-all word for shapes like rigatoni. On a Sunday, “Si fa i maccheroni” doesn’t mean elbows or some anonymous tube – it means a big, generous, ridged pasta that can hold a feast together.

Rigatoni is the canvas, but it’s never blank for long.

Sauce Pairing Suggestions

Because of its size, ridges and hollow core, rigatoni is almost unfairly versatile. A few pairings that feel especially Sicilian:

1. Ragù Siciliano
A slow-cooked meat sauce with tomatoes, onions, red wine and bay. Rigatoni lets chunks of meat, melting onion and sauce all coexist in one forkful. Ideal for feast days and long tables.

2. Swordfish, Tomato and Capers
Diced swordfish seared in olive oil, cherry tomatoes, capers, a handful of parsley. The sauce slips inside the tubes while the fish clings to the outside. It tastes like the Strait of Messina on a good day.

3. Norma-Inspired Rigatoni
Take the flavours of pasta alla Norma – fried aubergine, tomato, ricotta salata, basil – and give them a tubular home. Rigatoni catches cubes of aubergine, while salty cheese dust locks into the ridges.

4. Sausage, Fennel and Red Wine
Sicilian sausage (ideally with fennel seeds), sweated slowly with onions, deglazed with red wine, finished with tomato or just stock. The fat and fennel perfume get pulled deep into the hollow centre.

5. Creamy Mushroom and Caciocavallo
Porcini or local mushrooms sautéed until golden, bound with a little cream or stock, finished with aged caciocavallo. The sauce glosses the outside; the interior stays juicy.

Rigatoni is essentially saying: “Bring me something with flavour and I’ll do the rest.”

Fun Facts

• Region of Origin (Pick Your Fighter). One major Italian producer explicitly lists rigatoni’s “region of origin” as Sicily and Basilicata, while many food writers link it strongly to Roman trattoria culture – proof that the shape straddles both worlds. DeLallo+3Valdigrano+3Encyclopedia Britannica+3

• Name Logic. The word comes from rigato (“ridged/ruled”), with the augmentative -one: rigatone = big ridged one; rigatoni is the plural. Wikipedia+1

• Alias Chaos. Across Italy, similar tubes show up under names like bombardoni, cannaroni rigati, cannerozzi rigati, rigatoni romani, tufoloni rigati, scaffittuni – a sign of how widely the idea spread. Valdigrano

• Loved in Sicily. Modern references keep repeating the same line: rigatoni is a “particularly favourite” pasta shape in southern Italy, “especially in Sicily.” Wikipedia+1

• Industrial Child. Unlike hand-rolled shapes, rigatoni’s ridges require extrusion through metal dies. Its rise is inseparable from the mechanisation of pasta-making in the 19th–20th century. DeLallo

A Pasta That Tells a Story

Every plate of rigatoni in Sicily connects at least three layers of history:

1. Ancient grain and drying know-how, pushed forward by Arab and Mediterranean influences that made durum wheat pasta a thing here in the first place. Tuscookany+1

2. The age of the pastificio, when small factories began extruding and slow-drying these ridged tubes, stacking them in warm air to make them shelf-stable for shipping and storage. The Pasta Project+1

3. The everyday life of families, who turned this fairly recent industrial shape into something deeply domestic – the base for Sunday meals, feast-day casseroles, and “there’s half a sausage, some cheese and a jar of tomato, let’s feed six” evenings.

On the table, rigatoni is humble: flour, water (and sometimes eggs), cut into a shape that doesn’t pretend to be delicate. In the mouth, it’s surprisingly refined. You get structure and chew, sure, but you also get the perfume of slow-cooked sauces, the salt of aged cheese, the sweetness of onions and tomatoes that have seen at least an hour in the pan.

That tension – between blunt form and nuanced flavour – is very Sicilian. Rustic, yes. But rustic with precision.

Rigatoni Beyond Sicily

Now we get to the fun identity mess.

Historically, the word maccheroni in Italian didn’t refer to one specific supermarket shape. It was a flexible term for various forms of pasta – dumplings, tubes, elongated strands – especially in the south. Lapham’s Quarterly+1 Over time, those maccheroni evolved into recognisable families: long maccheroni, short maccheroni, ridged maccheroni… and eventually named shapes like rigatoni and tortiglioni.

Fast forward a couple of centuries and you get this situation:

• In much of southern Italy, ask for maccheroni and you’ll often be served something that looks very much like rigatoni or its cousins – short tubular pasta, sometimes smooth, sometimes ridged. italybite.it+1

• In Italy more broadly, maccheroni is still used loosely for various tubular or elongated shapes, while rigatoni is the more specific term for the big ridged tube. Wikipedia+1

• In English-speaking countries, “macaroni” mostly shrank into those little elbows in mac and cheese – a far cry from the big Sicilian tubes baked with ragù and aubergine, but still a descendant of the same linguistic tree. Etymonline+1

So you end up with a kind of pasta identity cascade:

• In Sicily: maccheroni very often = big tubes (rigatoni-type) for Sunday feasts.

• In Italy: rigatoni = one specific, well-defined version of those tubes.

• In the US and UK: macaroni = small elbows; rigatoni = the “fancy big tubes” you buy when you’re feeling serious.

Underneath all that, the deeper story is migration. As Sicilians and other southerners emigrated to the Americas and northern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they took their maccheroni with them – the recipes, the ethos, the idea that tube pasta is the backbone of a proper meal. Escoffier Online+1

Industrial producers abroad simplified: elbows were easy to extrude, package, and brand; the word macaroni stuck in English; rigatoni sat in the wings until later, when “authentic Italian” restaurant culture came back around and chefs started reaching for something more architectural.

Modern cuisine has happily made the confusion worse:

• Some chefs use rigatoni for ultra-traditional ragù alla napoletana.

• Others pair it with global flavours – gochujang, miso, harissa – because its ridges will carry almost anything.

• Health-conscious producers push wholegrain or gluten-free rigatoni, betting that if you’re going to eat fewer bowls of pasta, each tube might as well be satisfying.

Through it all, the Sicilian DNA is easy to spot: a love of shapes that can handle bold sauces, layered flavours, and the kind of portions that assume at least one extra person will show up.

Rigatoni, wherever it travels, keeps that character: a pasta made to be generous.

In the end, rigatoni is both very specific and very fluid.
Specific in shape – ridged, hollow, blunt, substantial.
Fluid in identity – claimed by Rome, rooted in the south, baked into Sicilian memory.

Call it rigatoni, call it maccheroni, call it “those big ridged tubes that hold all the good stuff.” The important part is what they do: carry sauce, carry stories, and carry the weight of a table that never seems quite full until someone says, “Ne vuoi ancora un po’?”