A New Italian Festival For the National Capital Region
By Chris Renneker, President
One of the things that I most look forward to living in Washington, D.C., is the large amount of ethnic festivals that run from late summer into fall. I have been to dozens of incredible festivals over the years. Each one is a special treat.
But as I have gone to Romanian festivals, Ukrainian festivals, Lebanese festivals, Egyptian festivals, etc. I have always wondered why there is not an Italian festival.
In 2019 I started asking around. I learned that there were actually Italian festivals in our region in the past, but they had gone dormant. I went on a deep dive to learn as much about these festivals as I could and to find all of the people who were involved and still in the area to help bring them back.
We were delayed by COVID, defunct entities, and a belief that the local Italian community was on an irreversible trajectory of decline.
Although it took longer than expected, I am thrilled to announce that we will be having a festival again October 4th and 5th at National Harbor.
Please see the link below:
AMHS is integrally involved in the planning and promotion of the festival with the Order of Sons and Daughters of Italy in America but it is a large undertaking and there's still a lot of work to be done. Not only as a society but as the Italian community, it's success will be our success or it's failure will be our failure.
I ask any member who is interested in being a vendor to be a part of the festival and any member who is able to come out and patronize those who are supporting us by taking a chance on this first festival.
If we have success, this will be an annual event and will fill the void in our community that has been left by so many of our celebrations that have gone by the wayside.
The festival will be two days, over Saturday and Sunday, and will feature an array of vendors and food along with live entertainment. Obviously, the Society will have a table where we will promote our regions and our club. We will be roasting arrosticini and serving pizzelle.
The festival will be a great way for our community to engage with the broader population and let them know that we have an Italian-American community. Many people don't know that we are even here as a group. I hope this will be an annual event to engage and remind people that we are here and allow for people to connect with our heritage.
I meet so many young Italian Americans that move here from heavily Italian enclaves and feel disconnected from their culture and don't know that there's any organizations or heritage in this city. I met one such transplant from New York recently who after six months has not encountered any Italian-American community in D.C. So let's remedy that by showing up and supporting this festival with everything we have.
We have a new museum in D.C. The Italian American Museum of Washington, D.C. It's a great museum, but I always feel I bit sad when visiting. There are so many photos, banners and stories of all of the great things that the Italian community in this area had and did. With this festival we are showing that, although we have a museum, we are not consigned to the museum and we are still doing new things and writing new chapters in the story of Italian and Italian-Americans in the capital region.
The Villa Rosa Festival was held at a nursing home founded by the Scalabrinians as a rest home for Italian immigrants. This festival lasted over 50 years. A Washington Post article from the 1970s highlighted the parishioners of Holy Rosary baking over 2,600 calzoni for the festival and using these funds to help build the Casa Italiana, which became a hub and center for the Italian American community for decades. Other articles highlight generations of families operating the same table and young adults saying how much they look forward to bringing their future kids to the festival.
A Washington Post article from the 1980s calls this "Washington D.C.’s last Italian neighborhood" and highlights the high proportion of elderly Italians living in the nursing home — how even the rolling hills reminds them of their homeland; how Italian music plays on the phonographs and bocce is played on the back lawn. `
I visited the grounds a couple years ago with people who knew them well, scouting to revive the festival. The grounds were abandoned and the buildings were derelict. A statue of the Blessed Virgin was defaced. They were almost brought to tears to see the state of the Villa Rosa they remembered.
At its peak the festival drew over 25,000 attendees. Richard Nixon addressed the crowd in 1972 at the 12th annual Villa Rosa Festival where the president riffed that, "(e)very time I have been in Italy and every time I attend an Italian picnic, I think I have some Italian blood, I can assure you of that" and highlighted the importance of Italian military service stating that "in our armed services there is no group in this country that has a finer record of volunteering and serving courageously than those of Italian background. And we are proud of that."
This storied event was last held in 2016. It faded away. It wasn't canceled or relocated or stopped for any particular reason.
A separate festival was organized by young Italian Americans in the city. It was a street festival first held in 1998 in front of Holy Rosary and Casa Italiana. This event brought vendors and entertainment back into a neighborhood that was once heavily Italian but had been displaced by the building of the interstate and the Judiciary Square office complex.
With an event like this you could almost imagine how the neighborhood would have felt in the 1920s after Italian immigrants settled in the area after building Holy Rosary with their own hands.
Festivals, generally, are integral to the expression of Italian culture and faith. And these festivals were no different.
Since I came to DC, in 2017, the Italian community has been becoming less active every year. I was blown away at the community when I first came and old-timers told me it was a shadow of what it used to be. Now I tell people I meet the same thing.
But it doesn't have to be this way. There are many Italian and Italian Americans who want to get together and celebrate and share our culture. This festival represents not only a chance for us to celebrate and engage with our own culture but to promote our groups and clubs to new people and new generations.
I am the president of the Abruzzo Molise Heritage Society. I lived in D.C. for years without knowing the society existed, even though my family comes from Abruzzo. I found out about the society and Holy Rosary, where I would later be married, because of a free operetta pop up by a group called the In Series hosted at Casa Italiana.
These opportunities to have cultural celebrations and engage outside of our existing groups and members are integral to experiences like mine and a gateway to having a thriving community and active members.
With all of that said I hope that we are writing a story of a festival similar to the two that I highlighted earlier. I hope that the success of this festival can enliven our community and even lead to the invigoration of something like Villa Rosa.
We are very close to the festival start, and there is still a lot to do but if our community comes together we can certainly have a tremendous festival.
With that if you know anyone who wants to be a vendor, volunteer, or attend please share the below links. And if you'd like to help out with the AMHS table please email me at president@abruzzomoliseheritagesociety.org.
https://festaitalianadc.com/vendors/
https://festaitalianadc.com/volunteer/
Fall 2025