Ellis Island Off The Beaten Path

If your family migrated from Italy to America - it is likely that you have been to Ellis Island. There is now an extraordinary exhibit in Rome which I think of as the Sister to Ellis Island - The National Museum of Italian Emigration in the Vittoriano Complex, Gipsoteca Room on the first floor at Piazza dell'Ara Coeli - right at Piazza Venezia.
29 million Italian migrants were able to forge the hope of a better life in many other countries from the bitter experience of the tough living conditions that they left behind. They created a shared identity as "Italians abroad" from the many different regions of their homeland.
A region-by-region breakdown of migration reveals significant variations over time. From 1876 to the end of the 19th Century, the Italian regions that provided the greatest number of emigrants were: Veneto 876 thousand - Friuli 803 thousand - Piedmont 685 thousand - and Lombardy 497 thousand. The only souther region that came close was Campania with 470 thousand.
Italy's biggest wave of emigration took place during the first 15 years of the 20th century, when my family left Verona for the U.S. All told, the Veneto region provided the highest number - 3.2 million emigrants.
Despite this, the public perception remains hat the term "emigrant" and "Southern Italian" are practically synonymous - a grand falacy.