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The Department of Transnational Italian Studies is delighted to announce a field trip to , with a tour led by Maura Febbo, President of . The itinerary will include visits to the historic building and to the permanent exhibition of The Italian Cultural Center of the Delaware Valley, as well as a walk to the “The Printzhof” nearby, a replica of the original settlements of “New Sweden”. The event is organized within Luca Zipoli's course “Philadelphia the Global City: The Italian Legacy across Time” (ITAL B240) and is open to all the students enrolled in the class.

We will be taking the vans to the Lazaretto. There will be a first pick up in Haverford's South Lot at 11:15 am and a second pick up at ��Ӱֱ��'s Pem Arch at 11:25 am. 

Please contact lzipoli@brynmawr.edu for more information.

The event is co-sponsored by the Tri-Co Philly Program and Praxis. 

About Philadelphia Lazaretto:

The word “lazaretto” is borrowed from the Italian word for “pesthouse” or quarantine ground. It derives from the biblical figure Lazarus, a beggar covered with sores, who became the patron saint of people afflicted with leprosy (he was not the same figure as the other Lazarus in the Bible, who rose from the dead). At the end of the 18th-cenury, Philadelphia was the nation’s capital, largest city, and busiest seaport. Four devastating yellow fever epidemics hit the city, killing over 10,000 people (out of a population of 50,000), so much so that in 1794 the city established one of the first Boards of Health in the country. Then, between 1799 and 1801 the Board of Health built a new quarantine station on Tinicum Island, a few miles farther downriver from the previous Lazaretto (also called the Marine Hospital) on State Island next to Fort Mifflin. Until 1895 the Lazaretto operated as the maritime quarantine station for the Port of Philadelphia: incoming ships, cargo, sailors, and passengers were inspected and sometimes detained in order to prevent the entry of infectious disease into the city, while sick sailors and passengers were treated at the Lazaretto hospital. After many decades of abandonment, in 2005 the Tinicum Township purchased the property in order to prevent a developer from demolishing the buildings and building an airport parking facility. A nonprofit board, the Lazaretto Preservation Association of Tinicum Township, was created to oversee the preservation of the remainder of the site and, after a lengthy restoration of the Main Building, the Italian Cultural Center of the Delaware Valley, the Swedish Colonial Historical Society, and the Delaware Valley Tinicum Township Historical Society moved their permanent exhibitions and offices into the building.

Speaker's bio: 

Maura Febbo is the President of . She worked tirelessly for 10 years to create the center, which opened in 2024 within Tinicum's historic building "The Lazaretto".