Even though only 25 percent of my DNA leads back to Italy, I have always considered myself Italian. Given my surname, everyone assumes I’m pure Italian. (Everyone except my Irish mother who always reminded me that the majority of my roots lay in Ireland.) The fact that I grew up in a part of Illinois inhabited by few Italians did nothing to separate me from my heritage. Whatever everyone else was, I was Italian!

On my first trip to Europe when I was 23, I discovered I felt more comfortable in Florence than in any other city I had visited or in which I had lived. I decided that, someday, Florence would become my home. Everyone who knows me well knows I’m interested in anything Florentine.