diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.1.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.1.txt
index c25e0300a1050..ba76bdd4e5618 100755
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.1.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.1.txt
@@ -121,6 +121,7 @@ API changes
   result in ``NaT`` and not ``nan`` (:issue:`11245`).
 - Indexing with a null key will raise a ``TypeError``, instead of a ``ValueError`` (:issue:`11356`)
 - ``Series.ptp`` will now ignore missing values by default (:issue:`11163`)
+- ``Series`` and ``DataFrame`` have gained the .items() method to mirror .iteritems() and for compat with PY3 (:issue:`13918`)
 
 .. _whatsnew_0171.deprecations:
 
diff --git a/pandas/core/frame.py b/pandas/core/frame.py
index 4416213817ab4..19464d9d6a042 100644
--- a/pandas/core/frame.py
+++ b/pandas/core/frame.py
@@ -761,8 +761,7 @@ def itertuples(self, index=True, name="Pandas"):
         # fallback to regular tuples
         return zip(*arrays)
 
-    if compat.PY3:  # pragma: no cover
-        items = iteritems
+    items = iteritems
 
     def __len__(self):
         """Returns length of info axis, but here we use the index """
diff --git a/pandas/core/series.py b/pandas/core/series.py
index e388683012a66..08fb893392476 100644
--- a/pandas/core/series.py
+++ b/pandas/core/series.py
@@ -1096,8 +1096,7 @@ def iteritems(self):
         """
         return zip(iter(self.index), iter(self))
 
-    if compat.PY3:  # pragma: no cover
-        items = iteritems
+    items = iteritems
 
     # ----------------------------------------------------------------------
     # Misc public methods
diff --git a/pandas/tests/frame/test_misc_api.py b/pandas/tests/frame/test_misc_api.py
index 03b3c0a5e65d0..234bb9bbe4fa0 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/frame/test_misc_api.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/frame/test_misc_api.py
@@ -241,6 +241,12 @@ def test_iteritems(self):
         for k, v in compat.iteritems(df):
             self.assertEqual(type(v), Series)
 
+    def test_items(self):
+        # items is the same as iteritems (#13918)
+        df = DataFrame([[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]], columns=['a', 'a', 'b'])
+        for k, v in df.items():
+            self.assertEqual(type(v), Series)
+
     def test_iter(self):
         self.assertTrue(tm.equalContents(list(self.frame), self.frame.columns))
 
diff --git a/pandas/tests/series/test_misc_api.py b/pandas/tests/series/test_misc_api.py
index d74966738909d..a6d66bd8598a6 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/series/test_misc_api.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/series/test_misc_api.py
@@ -218,6 +218,16 @@ def test_iteritems(self):
         # assert is lazy (genrators don't define reverse, lists do)
         self.assertFalse(hasattr(self.series.iteritems(), 'reverse'))
 
+    def test_items(self):
+        # items is the same as iteritems (#13918)
+        for idx, val in self.series.items():
+            self.assertEqual(val, self.series[idx])
+
+        for idx, val in self.ts.items():
+            self.assertEqual(val, self.ts[idx])
+
+        self.assertFalse(hasattr(self.series.items(), 'reverse'))
+
     def test_raise_on_info(self):
         s = Series(np.random.randn(10))
         with tm.assertRaises(AttributeError):