The paper presents applied analyses of the long run trends for cultural consumption in Italy. The empirical analysis derives from the ISTAT sources by geographical areas and typologies of consumption some insights on the determinants of consumption in the long run. The role of economic crises is specifically investigated. Though it appears that GDP plays a significant role as driver of consumption, manly in the geographical drawing, we note for further research that key cultural consumptions seem to witness slight or no reduction over ‘crisis’ periods, mainly in the 2008-2009 turning point. The nature of positional good and the human capital formation contents could be main reasons for such evidence that are worth of various further researches.