Italians have indeed the best espressos/ristrettos that I've ever had the pleasure of drinking, but other than that the origin coffee culture is pretty much non-existing in Northern Italy (I've never been to the South). Comparatively speaking Milano is a desert when it comes to origin coffee shops, and the same goes for their hip neighbours across the Alps, i.e. Paris.
From my direct experience European cities further East and North fare much better, I can say that with first-hand experience about the city I live in (Bucharest) and about Bratislava, too (which I've found to be better compared to Vienna). I've also heard/read very good things about Budapest and Berlin, and (as an exception to my first part of the post) I've found coffee shops in the Chamberí district of Madrid to be serving quite good coffee.
All this to say that the Italians do not have the monopoly on saying how one should drink his/her coffee or not, for the simple fact that the Italians mostly only care about a small sub-set of coffee culture (i.e. espressos/ristrettos)