[category]
[title]
Little Italy is getting a new museum, and it comes with a piece of Chicago history that has spent the last six years at the center of a very public argument.
The Florence Scala Italian American Museum is nearing its planned opening at 1501 W. Taylor St., where it will highlight Italian immigrants and their contributions to Chicago. The museum is targeting October 12—Columbus Day—for its debut, according to Block Club Chicago.
And the museum will be home to the Christopher Columbus statue that once stood in Arrigo Park.
RECOMMENDED: The 40 best Italian restaurants in Chicago, for creamy vodka sauce, chicken Vesuvio and more
The Columbus statue was one of three removed from public parks in 2020 amid renewed protests against Columbus' history of violence and enslavement. Its eventual fate became part of a years-long legal and political fight between the city and Chicago's Italian American community. Under a 2025 agreement, the Chicago Park District gave the statue to the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans on loan, allowing it to be displayed indoors rather than returned to a public space.
“This is something very special to us,” Ron Onesti, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, told Block Club Chicago. “We’re only expecting the same respect and sensitivity to something that’s important to us as anyone else would with their culture. [The Columbus statue] really has nothing to do with what this guy who lived 600 years ago really did, what he conquered or what he found. What it’s become is an icon of faith and hope for our ethnic group.”
The statue (created by sculptor Carlo Brioschi) is expected to occupy a central spot inside the museum, mounted on a concrete platform built into the floor. Onesti told Block Club that it will serve as the museum's centerpiece and a symbol of the contributions of Italian Americans to Chicago. In order to get it into the building, however, he says he will have to cut a hole in the roof and lower it in.
The museum will present a chronological history of Italians in Chicago when it opens. As for the empty pedestal in Arrigo Park, it will soon have a new tenant: A statue of Frances Xavier Cabrini will replace the removed Columbus statue. Cabrini, the first U.S. citizen canonized by the Roman Catholic Church and the patron saint of immigrants, received about 38 percent of roughly 3,900 votes in a public contest to select the honoree earlier this year.