Gracie Mansion hosted a long-running annual reception celebrating Italian heritage, attended by various elected officials, including mayor Eric Adams, and representatives from local Italian cultural societies. Also in attendance was the Consul General of Italy in New York, Fabrizio Di Michele, who delivered a speech centered on Columbus Day, taking a defensive stance against critics of the holiday.

Columbus Day commemorates the Genoese sailor’s landing on the American continent on October 12^th 1492, and is celebrated across many countries in the Western hemisphere and Europe. In the U.S. it is mostly treated as a celebration of Italian immigrant culture.