Little Italy in the Grassmarket
This information on ‘Little Italy’, the Grassmarket’s Italian community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was uncovered by Edinburgh World Heritage while undertaking research for a ‘Street Story’ project on the Grassmarket.
The Grassmarket street story can be viewed online at http://www.ewht.org.uk/visit/street-stories/the-grassmarket and includes a brief account of ‘Little Italy’.
‘The Italians used to feel at home in the Grassmarket because it felt like a piazza with all the wee vennels running off it. My granny – Antonia Valente – used to look up to the castle and say “Ah, our Montecassino”. Many Italians never left the Grassmarket’.
Norma Braidie, Interview, Edinburgh, Wednesday 26th June 2013
Online Archive of the Italo-Scottish Research Cluster, University of Edinburgh