Portland’s Festa Italiana
If you thought Portland was just all about America, think again. With the region’s Festa Italiana, you can experience all there is to love about Italy without getting on a plane. At the festival you will find fabulously authentic Italian food, entertainment and a wine garden. But Portland is no stranger to Italy. It was back in the 1900s in which it had a Little Italy, with Italian immigrants building the Church of St. Michael in this area. Things changed however and the Italians very much lost their presence in Portland. But almost a century later, various Italian-American organizations tried to bring back Italian culture to share with their American counterparts in Portland. This marked the beginning of the Festa Italiana Association, which aimed to: “to promote Italian culture throughout the Greater Portland Community, to provide an opportunity for people, Italian-American and non Italian-American alike, to come together to celebrate the unique and profound contributions of Italy and her sons and daughters to the thought, art, and science of the Western World throughout the centuries.”
