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By Betsie Freeman Omaha's American Italian Heritage Society hasn't had a home of its own since it moved out of Little Italy in 2006. That's about to change. Construction crews are grading land at 132nd and Fort Streets for the group's new hall, an 18,000-square-foot building that will house a banquet room, meeting areas and a full commercial...

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La Festa Italiana is on the move. It will be outside a newly constructed American-Italian Heritage Center at 132nd and Fort this year.   The center called Il Palazzo will be a little piece of Italy in northwest Omaha. It will have a banquet hall and members can take courses on Italian music, language, history, and cooking. It's on sched...

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By Casey Logan    In 1910, Antonio and Nunziata Pirruccello emigrated from Sicily. They arrived in Omaha's emergent Little Italy neighborhood, where they started a few businesses, owned a number of properties and raised nine children of various talents. More than a century later, the offspring of those children, and the one surviving s...

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by Michael Kelly   He was a charming Italian named Franco with a little wooden fishing boat. She was a tourist from Omaha named Holly, visiting a small village on the Italian Riviera with a friend. Franco was flirtatious at first when they met in 1982, but he was 15 years older. Their relationship, Holly says, never became romantic.&nb...

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Paul Kulik runs some of the best restaurants in Omaha, and the James Beard Award semifinalist is known for his daring, often difficult cuisine. Ethan Bondelid is behind three of the city's most popular craft cocktail bars, and his ability to grab a trend and bring it to Omaha is well documented.   Now the two old friends and former room...

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Members of Omaha's Little Italy community cheered and cried Sunday as family and friends celebrated the final day of the Santa Lucia Italian Festival at Lewis & Clark Landing. The four-day festival concluded with members of the Italian-American community walking with an ornate and decorated statue of Santa Lucia through the streets of down...

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By Kevin Cole Plaudits came easily Sunday for the food, drink and fun at the 29th annual La Festa Italiana. This was the third and probably final year the festival was at the National Guard Center near 116th Street and Rainwood Road.   "Next year, if we're ready, we will be at our permanent home at 132nd and Fort," said Dr. Ted Bolamperti,...

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A groundbreaking ceremony was held on Thursday for a new American Italian Heritage Society headquarters in Omaha.   The building, at the corner of North 132nd and Fort streets, will provide space to educate the community about Italian culture and serve as a banquet facility accommodating up to 600 people. The group has been the sole spo...

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A task to banish a resident raccoon and unplug a gutter has "snowballed" into an interior makeover of a 125-year-old former firehouse in Omaha's Little Italy neighborhood.    But that's just the beginning. Owners of the narrow two-story structure — which has long been the Santa Lucia Hall — now want to launch a major capital campai...

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Italian immigrants entered the Great Plains first as missionaries (Fra Marco da Nizza, 1495-1558 and Eusebio Francisco Kino, 1645-1711 were two) and later as adventurers ( Count Leonetto Cipriani, 1816-1888 and Italian American Charles Siringo, 1855-1928, for example). Since Italy was not a unified country until the Risorgimento (1860-70), early tr...

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