When Andrea Canepari was a student at University of Pennsylvania Law School studying for his Master of Laws degree, and later representing Italy as the Italian consul general from 2013 to 2017, he found himself a keen observer of the rich culture surrounding him.

One social constant he observed was that while the Italian influence in Philadelphia was impossible to ignore – indeed, Italian culture and heritage seemed woven into the city’s DNA – there seemed to be no clear roadmap linking the past and present.