New York is the most “Italian” city in the US. Adding together Americans of Italian descent and Italian citizens living here, the metropolitan area is home to almost four million Italians—which is among the largest concentration in the world after Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Milan, and Rome. This translates into a most robust cultural presence that has its points of reference in a handful of excellent institutions dealing with the Italian and Italian-American experience. In the first of a series, we asked the Dean of the Calandra Institute to describe who they are, what their mission is, and to talk about their many activities.