Project launched to establish history of Italian families in Ireland

A project has been launched to establish the culture and history of long-established Italian families here. There are now more than 10,000 members of the so-called Irlandiani, – the Italians in Ireland - and while many came here during the boom Celtic Tiger years, this influential community in Ireland can trace its roots back to Christopher Columbas.

Other Italians of note include Charles Bianconi, who set up Ireland’s first public transport system in the 1800s; and the National Gallery’s chief conservator, Sergio Benedetti, who discovered The Taking of Christ, a lost masterpiece by Caravaggio in the Jesuits’ house of studies on Leeson Street in the 1990s.