Baci Perugina

The Baci Spark...

The taste of simple things, spontaneity, love in all its forms, the ability to move you and you to move others. Baci Perugina makes you rediscover all this ... it's that sweet gesture that remembers just how little it takes to spark the most authentic emotions.

Live your emotions to the fullest, because they are unique and unrepeatable. Like the relationships with people that you hold dear. Like Baci Perugina, which has always found a way to express them.

Live your emotions to the fullest, because they are unique and unrepeatable. Like the relationships with people that you hold dear. Like Baci Perugina, which has always found a way to express them.

History of Baci Perugina

The story behind the much-loved Baci begins in 1922 with fashion designer and entrepreneur Luisa Spagnoli who came up an innovative idea for a new recipe of chocolates. Spagnoli devised a combination of chopped hazelnuts and melted chocolate to create a creamy filling, topped with a whole toasted hazelnut, and encased in dark chocolate.

The irregular shape reminded Spagnoli of the knuckles of a fist, leading to the chocolate's rough-sounding original name, "Cazzotto", meaning "punch" in Italian. This didn't sound right to Giovanni Buitoni, the young manager and son of Perugina co-founder Francesco, who softened the name to "Baci", reasoning that people would prefer a kiss to a punch. Buitoni and Spagnoli - who was 14 years his senior and was married to one of his father's partners - were secret lovers.

Subsequently the Perugina art director Federico Seneca had the idea of inserting romantic phrases inside the foil-wrapped chocolates.

According to legend, the love notes idea was inspired by the secret handwritten messages, hidden in chocolates, exchanged between Buitoni and Spagnoli. Seneca then devised the blue and silver box depicting the couple kissing under the stars, inspired by the painting The Kiss by Italian artist Francesco Hayez‎. The combination of the recipe, name and packaging proved a winning formula and Baci became immensely popular, with Perugina boasting in a 1927 advert: “In just five years, Perugina has sold 100 million Baci”.

A century since the creation of the classic chocolates, the Perugina company, now owned by Nestle, says that 1,500 Baci are made every minute, exported to 55 countries around the world, with half a billion "kisses" sold each year.