The traces of the Italian diaspora in the US are countless, but we tend to find them sitting quietly in archives, street names, or family memories. Things are bound to change, however, thanks to a new project launched by the COMITES of Washington D.C., aimed at making all these traces visible again and connecting them, one by one, to the places in Italy where each story began. Called Tracing Italian Roots, the project is an ambitious digital map that will record Italian and Italian-American contributions to the capital region and link them to their hometowns across the Atlantic.
The idea comes from a simple question: what does the Italian footprint in Washington actually look like? Churches, cafés, schools, and cultural institutions all tell a part of the story, but the goal here is to build a single, interactive map that unites them and fills in the gaps with personal stories that never reached the history books.
