Italy’s first U.S. mayor is a woman, Mary Elisabeth Smith, who as of October 2023 will sit in the highest seat in Bolognetta, a town of four thousand between Palermo and Agrigento that has experienced a great deal of emigration over the past century. But Elisabeth Smith, an opera singer, does not have a drop of Sicilian blood in her veins: born in Norfolk, Virginia, and raised in Detroit, Michigan, she moved to Sicily in the 1990s to join her husband, who – a Lombard by birth – had moved for a professional position at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo.

His plan to revive the town, based on expertise, enhanced services and new tourist attractiveness based on traditions and food and wine, glided over the Sicilian hinterland, even attracting a couple from Bolognetta who had emigrated to the States, businesswoman Enza Greco and manager Guglielmo Mineo, who felt the urge to return to get involved as town councilors in their home town.

And it has inevitably opened a bridge of dialogue with the world, particularly in the Year of Roots Tourism. Thus, the municipality is working to develop a varied range of tourism services aimed at children and grandchildren of emigrants who have a desire to reconnect with their homeland. Starting with members of the St. Anthony Society, founded in 1902 in Little Italy by a group of Bolognese emigrants, and later expanded to include St. Anthony Chapel in Garfield, New Jersey.