Celebrating 200 years of Italian studies at Columbia University

The history of Italian at Columbia

The study of Italian language and literature at Columbia University dates back to 1825 when the Standing Committee of the Trustees of Columbia College established a Professorship of Italian Literature and appointed Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist, to that position. In 1927, construction was completed on the Casa Italiana, a 7-story Renaissance-style palazzo at 117th Street and Amsterdam gifted to Columbia by donors and volunteers from the Italian-American community “for use by the University as the centre and seat of its work in the field of Italian language, literature, history, and art.” The Department of Italian was housed in the Casa Italiana from this time until the early 1990s, when it was relocated to the fifth floor of Hamilton Hall.