The Italian community is one of the oldest and largest foreign communities in the UK. Italians registered with AIRE (the register of Italians abroad) as living in the country number more than 400,000, but the real presence is larger: far more Italian citizens applied for status under the EU Settlement Scheme after Brexit. London has one of the largest Italian communities outside Italy, and other historic communities live in Scotland, Wales, Manchester and Bedford.
Two centuries of emigration
The first Italians to settle permanently in London, in the 19th century, were craftsmen, street musicians, ice-cream makers and pedlars, often from the valleys of the Emilian and Tuscan Apennines and from the Ciociaria. They concentrated in Clerkenwell, which became London's Little Italy: here in 1863 St Peter's Italian Church was consecrated, still the heart of the community and home to the procession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in July. In the same period London was a refuge for exiles of the Risorgimento: Ugo Foscolo, Giuseppe Mazzini, who founded a school for emigrants' children there, and Antonio Panizzi, who became principal librarian of the British Museum.
Scotland, Wales and Bedford
Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries many emigrants, mainly from Tuscany (Barga and the Garfagnana) and southern Lazio, opened ice-cream parlours and fish and chip shops in Scotland: many Italian-Scottish families still run historic businesses today. In South Wales emigrants from the Val di Taro opened the "Bracchi" cafés, meeting places in the mining valleys. In 1940, when Italy entered the war, thousands of Italians were interned as "enemy aliens", and hundreds died in the sinking of the Arandora Star, which was deporting them to Canada. After the war the brickworks of Bedford recruited thousands of workers from southern Italy, creating one of the most Italian communities in England.
The new emigration
Since the 2000s, and especially after the 2008 crisis, the UK became one of the main destinations for young Italians: graduates seeking work in finance, research, healthcare and hospitality, students, professionals. London was the top European destination for young Italians before Brexit. After 2021 arrivals fell sharply, because working requires a visa, while those already resident could stay with settled status. Today the Italian community is among the most highly educated in the country and very present in universities, hospitals and cultural institutions.
Services and landmarks
- Italian Embassy and Consulate General in London, and the Consulate in Edinburgh for Scotland and Northern Ireland, for passports, ID cards, AIRE registration and voting.
- Italian Cultural Institutes in London and Edinburgh, which organise exhibitions, language courses and events.
- St Peter's Italian Church in Clerkenwell and the Italian Catholic missions in several cities.
- Regional associations, welfare offices, chambers of commerce and Italian-language newspapers.
For anyone thinking of moving: moving to the UK, Brexit and immigration and living in the UK. On the exiles' story see also travellers of the past.