In Italy there is not just a culture. If you move of 50km you actually call stuff with differents names here in Italy.

As Example:

Ciaccino -> Siena

Schiacciata -> Firenze

Siena and Firenze actually are 1 hour away.

It is clear that every sub-italian-culture have different words and gesture.

I want to add that we use the same gesture in an extraordinary range of expression. The same "Fk you" can be a joke or a serious one and we will use the same gesture.

Finally, only 20% of our communication is verbal, the rest is un-spoken communication. I can guess that here in Italy the 30% is verbal+gesture communication, the rest is all about the tone of the voice (very important), the position of the body and other stuff.