Everyone can be Italian this weekend at the Italian Cultural Society of Sacramento’s Festa Italiana. The 25th annual Italian festival has much more to offer than the stereotypical spaghetti and meatballs. Once held at the Cal Expo, the fair is now at the Croatian-American Cultural Center at 3730 Auburn Blvd. This year’s Festa Italiana is set up to represent authentic festivals in towns across Italy. It started as a small picnic in the park by the society’s Gioventú young people group, the festival has grown to an average 6,000 visitors per year. Bill Cerruti, executive director of the Italian Cultural Society, said the Italian-American community of Sacramento wanted something to celebra

Sacramento's Italian community is known to produce gourmet food, but there's much more to the community than Biba, Sofia's and Hot Italian. With this weekend's Festa Italian opening Saturday and running through Sunday at The Croatian Culture Center, we take a look back at the role Italian immigrants and their descendants played in Sacramento's history. Italian Americans have a long history in the Sacramento area. Agriculture and food processing are just some of the many successes of Italian Americans who settled in the area in the early 1850s, but their successes are hardly limited to that. Early Italian Americans Many of the earliest Gold Rush settlers who migrated in the "Mother Lode