ITALY WALK: The Italian Heart of Manhattan

ITALY WALK:  The Italian Heart of Manhattan

When: Tuesday, March 24

Departure: 5:30 PM from the IIC, 686 Park Avenue, for transfer by subway, or meet at 6:00 PM in front of the Tenement Museum, 103 Orchard Street.

Duration: approximately 2 hours from the Tenement Museum

Maria Teresa Cometto and Glauco Maggi accompany us for the second walk of Italy Walk. This time the destination is the Italian heart of Manhattan, following the living traces of emigration to New York with an itinerary through memory, identity, and extraordinary stories in the heart of Manhattan.

From the Tenement Museum – which shows the lives of immigrants in the early twentieth century, such as that of the Sicilian Baldizzi family – we will go to the Italian American Museum. Then to Tiro a Segno, the oldest Italian-American club in the U.S., which houses one of Garibaldi’s pistols and a shooting range in its basement. We will cross Washington Square Park, where there is a statue of Garibaldi. A few steps away, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Memorial, we will remember the tragic 1911 fire in which many young Italian women workers lost their lives. We will conclude the tour at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, the first Catholic cathedral in New York, where the parish priest, Don Luigi, will tell us its story as the spiritual and social heart of Italian Americans since its founding in 1815.

This tour is the second in the new “ITALY WALK” series: walks through New York neighborhoods in the company of Maria Teresa Cometto and Glauco Maggi, two journalists who have lived in the Big Apple since 2000 and have explored it on foot block by block.

When: Tuesday, March 24

Departure: 5:30 PM from the IIC, 686 Park Avenue, for transfer by subway, or meet at 6:00 PM in front of the Tenement Museum, 103 Orchard Street.

Duration: approximately 2 hours from the Tenement Museum

Maria Teresa Cometto and Glauco Maggi are Italian journalists and authors, wife and husband in New York since 2000 and U.S. citizens since 2018. They are co-authors, among other works, of “Qui non è Nuova York” (Neri Pozza), now also available in English published by Bordighera Press: “(RE)COVERING AMERICA. Two Italians, One Epic Road Trip, from New York to the Pacific. 105 Days, Breaking Stereotypes”.