A new episode of “Nuova York: Hidden in Plain Sight” tells the story of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian patriot whose statue by Giuseppe Turini stands in Washington Square Park, a few steps away from New York University.
Stefano Albertini from NYU explains how Garibaldi played a fundamental role in the reunification of Italy, how he also fought in Latin America and how he lived in New York in the 1850’s with Antonio Meucci, the inventor of the telephone. Their house was on Staten Island.
Garibaldi’s statue was the first of the “Barsotti’s Five”. The banker financed, by raising money from the Italian community, five statues of notable Italians in New York to mark the Italian presence in the city. Garibaldi’s statue was erected in 1888; the others are Giovanni da Verrazzano, Giuseppe Verdi, Christopher Columbus and Dante Alighieri.
“Nuova York: Hidden in Plain Sight” is a brand new web-series produced by New York University’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò that focuses on the many Italian landmarks that can be found in New York City, from monuments to churches, from buildings to shops and institutions. Presented by Stefano Albertini, it is on a mission to uncover and showcase the tangible traces of Italian presence in the city that boasts the largest Italian-American population in North America, the third-largest Italian population outside of Italy itself.
Each episode of this series shines a spotlight on something special, answering those fundamental questions: when was it established, by whom, and why? Previous episodes featured the Church of Our Lady of Pompeii in Carmine Street, Greenwich Village; the Di Palo Fine Foods shop in Grand Street, Little Italy; and the history of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
