The Italian Historical Society of San Diego was established in 2006 as an auxiliary of Convivio Society for Italian Humanities, a nonprofit organization. It is dedicated to scholarly pursuits of San Diego’s Italian history. Through research, publications, and historical projects and events coordinated in conjunction with local universities and other organizations, the Italian Historical Society strives to preserve San Diego’s Italian heritage and create a lasting historical tableau.

We are also working to establish the Little Italy Historical Center, a community resource that will recount the history of San Diego’s Italians through scholarship, presentations, photographic exhibits, and other displays.

The Society’s ongoing initiative is the Italian Archives of San Diego. This endeavor is devoted to preserving the history of San Diego’s Italian community, which is quickly diminishing without timely preservation efforts. Our long-term objective for the project is to house historical photographs and documents in physical archives; our short-term objective is to continue building digital archives of such artifacts. To that end, the Italian Historical Society is actively soliciting photographs and documents to be carefully scanned by our research team and then uploaded to the digital archives for historical preservation.

In 2007, Convivio and the Italian Historical Society partnered with the University of California, San Diego, to establish the Italian Archives at the university’s Mandeville Special Collections Library. As a result of this landmark development, the Italian Historical Society is now accepting original materials such as photographs, documents, manuscripts, books, and film, which will be housed at the library for preservation and research access. Our archives team will continue to duplicate the materials for use online and in our future historical center and cultural institute, which will provide public access to the community’s artifacts.