After months of planning and hard work, fueled by the efforts of many volunteers, Casa Italiana—Italian Cultural Center officially opened on May 29, 2021. When fully realized, the new Italian cultural center will include an Italian library, exhibition space to preserve documents and photos that record the heritage and contributions of Italians in the Pacific Northwest, meeting rooms, offices, commercial kitchen, banquet space and an espresso bar that opened this spring. One of the offices now houses Seattle’s Honorary Consul.

A small group of dignitaries were on hand to inaugurate the new center. These included Lorenzo Ortona, consul general of Italy, and Fabio Massimo Ballerini, consul of Italy – both from the General Consulate in San Francisco. The current and past honorary consuls for Seattle, Elisabetta Valentini and Franco Tesorieri, were also in attendance.