This in an exciting year to have Italian roots. Italy designated 2024 as the year of Roots Tourism, a 20 million euro project, backed by the European Union called “Integrated Strategy for the Revival of the Tourism Sector in Post-COVID-19 Italy.” That’s a lot!

What does that mean to us here in the United States with Italian roots? We’re among more than 80 million people worldwide whose ancestors left Southern Italy in the late 1800s as stone masons, tailors, bakers, and laborers for a better life in the new world.