Latest data shows that there are more than 300 varieties of pasta around the world, with even greater variety of names. Even the Italians don’t know all the names. Many types of pasta are made to liken familiar shapes.

• Pene and Pene Rigate are an extremely popular variety of macaroni – as their name suggests, their ends are sliced, giving them an ink-pen shape.
• Fusilli are sticks which are twisted into spirals around their own horizontal axis. You can also encounter them as “spirals”. Apart from their cute shape, they are offered in different colours – green (with spinach) and red (with tomatoes).
• Farfalle and Farfallone are butterfly-shaped but differ in size, while the fiori are shaped like flowers.
• Hollow pasta – generally represented by macaroni – has endless varieties. For example, macaroni are all narrow but hollow pasta types. In Calabria, however, they eat so much macaroni that for a long time now they are calling all pasta like that.
• One of the favourite pasta shapes is the shell – according to its size, the shell-shaped pasta is called (in ascending order) cavatelli, conchiglie, conchiglioni.
• The Cannelloni are hollow, cylindric macaroni that are so big that are often prepared with cheese and/or meat filling that can also be baked. The same holds true for the manicotti.
• The Rigatoni are less bent but with creases and go very well with meat and cheese sauces.
• Gemelli are two pasta sticks wrapped around each other.
• Radiatori are squares with curly rims, that are ribbed just like radiators or accordions after which they are named.
• Rotelle are irregularly-shaped, like a wheel of a cart.