Until I got my DNA results a few years ago, I was convinced — due entirely to family pride, the family tree and my nonna’s pronunciation of particular words — that I was at the very least a quarter Italian. After all, we made pizzelles every Christmas alongside sugar cookies and my grandmother pronounced prosciutto “pro-SHOOT” and called the cheese...
READ MOREBoston’s North End is a top destination for 2022, according to Fodor’s Travel. The travel publication included the North End and three other New England locations in its 2022 Go List, which includes 49 of the best places across the U.S. to visit in 2022. “Older than the United States, Boston’s immigrant gateway fuses past and present through gastro...
READ MOREFor many people, just to hear the voice of a loved one again is worth more than gold itself. When historian and author Anthony V. Riccio set out to record Italian immigrant stories in Boston’s North End nearly 40 years ago, he did not know that these voices would one day prove to be that gold not just for the immigrants’ families, but for all those...
READ MOREMonday is the first Indigenous Peoples day in Boston, but some members of the city's Italian-American community complain a day usually dedicated to their own heritage has been done away with. 14 states and more than 130 local governments have chosen not to observe Columbus Day, many instead dedicating the second Monday in October to Native groups....
READ MOREFrom watching a game at Fenway Park to sailing on the Charles River, summers in Boston are defined by a variety of activities and customs. In Boston's North End neighborhood, summers revolve around one thing: feasts. Join us as we examine the religious feasts of Boston's North End neighborhood as an emblem of the Italian-American identity and exper...
READ MOREWhen Dominic D. DiFrancesco was campaigning for American Legion national commander, one of his stops was in Massachusetts. It was there that Past National Commander John P. “Jake” Comer, knowing DiFrancesco’s Italian heritage, took his guest to the North End, known as Boston’s Little Italy. “He was a great lover of Italian pastries, and when he cam...
READ MOREOn the surface, Mary Cona was just another Italian girl from the North End. She was a devout Catholic, a supportive wife, a loving mother. However, diving into the details of her remarkable life through her eyes in her autobiography, “Destino: From Italy to Kansas City,” Mary was shaped through many hardships into an artist, entrepreneur, philanthr...
READ MOREIn a five-minute video posted to Instagram Tuesday, Damien DiPaola announced that his North End restaurant Domenic’s will permanently close. DiPaola, who also owns Carmelina’s in the North End, cited both the pandemic and a new perspective on life as the reasons for its closure. “I opened Domenic’s about seven or eight months before the pandemic, a...
READ MOREBoston’s North End streets filled with thousands of visitors and the smell of delicious Italian food all weekend long. Sunday was the culmination of the yearly four-day festival for Saint Anthony’s Feast and St. Lucia’s Feast. After a year off due to COVID restrictions, the feasts were back in full force this year, bringing in projected crowds of o...
READ MOREThe City of Boston extended its heat emergency through Saturday. But while cooling centers stayed open until 6 p.m., plenty of people flooded the North End for the Fisherman’s Feast, which is the city’s oldest Italian festival. “It’s good, I’m enjoying the food,” said one woman at the event. Saturday’s temperatures reached the high 80s, with what f...
READ MORE