title: Northumbria

text: Succession in Northumbria was hereditary, which left princes whose fathers died before they could come of age particularly susceptible to assassination and usurpation. A noteworthy example of this phenomenon is Osred, whose father Aldfrith died in 705, leaving the young boy to rule. He survived one assassination attempt early in his rule, but fell victim to another assassin at the age of nineteen. During his reign he was adopted by Wilfrid, a powerful bishop. Ecclesiastical influence in the royal court was not an unusual phenomenon in Northumbria, and usually was most visible during the rule of a young or inexperienced king. Similarly, ealdorman, or royal advisors, had periods of increased or decreased power in Northumbria, depending on who was ruling at the time.


title: Northumbria

text: Warfare in Northumbria before the Danish period largely consisted of rivalries with the Picts to the north. The Northumbrians were successful against the Picts until the Battle of Dun Nechtain in 685, which halted their expansion north and established a border between the two kingdoms. Warfare during the Danish period was dominated by warfare between the Northumbrians and other English Kingdoms.


title: Northumbria

text: After the English from Wessex absorbed the Danish-ruled territories in the southern part of the former kingdom, Scots invasions reduced the rump Northumbria to an earldom stretching from the Tees to the Tweed. The surviving Earldom of Northumbria was then disputed between the emerging kingdoms of England and Scotland, to be split roughly in half along the River Tweed.


title: Northumbria

text: Under Roman rule, some Britons north of the Humber practised Christianity. York had a bishop as early as the fourth century. After the Romans left Britain in the early fifth century, Christianity did not disappear, but it existed alongside Celtic paganism, and possibly many other cults. Anglo-Saxons brought their own Germanic pagan beliefs and practices when they settled there. At Yeavering, in Bernicia, excavations have uncovered evidence of a pagan shrine, animal sacrifice, and ritual burials.


title: Northumbria

text: The first King of Northumbria to convert to Christianity was King Edwin. He was baptized by Paulinus in 627. Shortly thereafter, many of his people followed his conversion to the new religion, only to return to paganism when Edwin was killed in 633. Paulinus was Bishop of York, but only for a year.


title: Northumbria

text: The lasting conversion of Northumbria took place under the guidance of the Irish cleric Aidan. He converted King Oswald of Northumbria in 635, and then worked to convert the people of Northumbria. King Oswald moved the bishopric from York to Lindisfarne.


title: Northumbria

text: The monastery at Lindisfarne was founded by Aidan in 635, and based on the practices of the Columban monastery in Iona, Scotland. The location of the bishopric shifted to Lindisfarne, and it became the centre for religion in Northumbria. The bishopric would not leave Lindisfarne and shift back to its original location at York until 664. Throughout the eighth century, Lindisfarne was associated with important figures. Aidan, the founder, Wilfrid, a student, and Cuthbert, a member of the order and a hermit, all became bishops and later Saints. Aidan assisted Heiu to found her double monastery at Hartlepool. She too came to be venerated as a saint.


title: Northumbria

text: The Christianity culture of Northumbria was influenced by the continent as well as Ireland. In particular, Wilfrid travelled to Rome and abandoned the traditions of the Celtic church in favour of Roman practices. When he returned to England, he became abbot of a new monastery at Ripon in 660. Wilfrid advocated acceptance of the authority of Rome at the Synod of Whitby. The two-halves of the double monastery Monkwearmouth–Jarrow were founded by the nobleman Benedict Biscop in 673 and 681. Biscop became the first abbot of the monastery, and travelled to Rome six times to buy books for the library. His successor, Abbot Ceolfrith, continued to add to the library until by one estimate the library at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow had over two hundred volumes. One who benefited from this library was Bede.


title: Northumbria

text: In the early seventh century in York, Paulinus founded a school and a minster, but not a monastery. The School at York Minster is one of the oldest in England. By the late eighth century, the school had a noteworthy library, estimated at one hundred volumes. Alcuin was a student and teacher at York before he left for the court of Charlemagne in 782.


title: Northumbria

text: In 664, King Oswiu called the Synod of Whitby to determine whether to follow Roman or Irish customs. Since Northumbria was converted to Christianity by the Celtic clergy, the Celtic tradition for determining the date of Easter and Irish tonsure were supported by many, particularly by the Abbey of Lindisfarne. Roman Christianity was also represented in Northumbria, by Wilfrid, Abbot of Ripon. By the year 620, both sides were associating the other's Easter observance with the Pelagian Heresy. The King decided at Whitby that Roman practice would be adopted throughout Northumbria, thereby bringing Northumbria in line with Southern England and Western Europe. Members of the clergy who refused to conform, including the Celtic Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne, returned to Iona. The episcopal seat of Northumbria transferred from Lindisfarne to York, which later became an archbishopric in 735.


title: Northumbria

text: The Viking attack on Lindisfarne in 793 was the first of many raids on monasteries of Northumbria. The Lindisfarne Gospels survived, but monastic culture in Northumbria went into a period of decline in the early ninth century. Repeated Viking assaults on religious centres were one reason for the decrease in production of manuscripts and communal monastic culture.


title: Northumbria

text: After 867, Northumbria came under control of the Scandinavian forces, and there was an influx of Scandinavian immigrants. Their religion was pagan and had a rich mythology. Within the Kingdom of York, once the raids and war were over, there is no evidence that the presence of Scandinavian settlers interrupted Christian practice. It appears that they gradually adopted Christianity and blended their Scandinavian culture with their new religion. This can be seen in carved stone monuments and ring-headed crosses, such as the Gosforth Cross. During the ninth and tenth centuries, there was an increase in the number of parish churches, often including stone sculptures incorporating Scandinavian designs.


title: Northumbria

text: The Christian culture of Northumbria, fuelled by influences from the continent and Ireland, promoted a broad range of literary and artistic works.


title: Northumbria

text: The Irish monks who converted Northumbria to Christianity, and established monasteries such as Lindisfarne, brought a style of artistic and literary production. Eadfrith of Lindisfarne produced the Lindisfarne Gospels in an Insular style.


title: Northumbria

text: The Irish monks brought with them an ancient Celtic decorative tradition of curvilinear forms of spirals, scrolls, and doubles curves. This style was integrated with the abstract ornamentation of the native pagan Anglo-Saxon metalwork tradition, characterized by its bright colouring and zoomorphic interlace patterns.


title: Northumbria

text: Insular art, rich in symbolism and meaning, is characterized by its concern for geometric design rather than naturalistic representation, love of flat areas of colour, and use of complicated interlace patterns. All of these elements appear in the Lindisfarne Gospels (early eighth century). The Insular style was eventually imported to the European continent, exercising great influence on the art of the Carolingian empire.


title: Northumbria

text: Usage of the Insular style was not limited to manuscript production and metalwork. It can be seen in and sculpture, such as the Ruthwell Cross and Bewcastle Cross. The devastating Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793 marked the beginning of a century of Viking invasions that severely limited the production and survival of Anglo-Saxon material culture. It heralded the end of Northumbria's position as a centre of influence, although in the years immediately following visually rich works like the Easby Cross were still being produced.


title: Northumbria

text: The Venerable Bede (673–735) is the most famous author of the Anglo-Saxon Period, and a native of Northumbria. His (Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731) has become both a template for later historians and a crucial historical account in its own right, and much of it focuses on Northumbria. He's also famous for his theological works, and verse and prose accounts of holy lives. After the Synod of Whitby, the role of the European continent gained importance in Northumbrian culture. During the end of the eighth century, the scriptorium at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow was producing manuscripts of his works for high demand on the Continent.


title: Northumbria

text: Northumbria was also home to several Anglo-Saxon Christian poets. Cædmon lived at the double monastery of Streonæshalch (Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy (657–680) of St. Hilda (614–680). According to Bede, he "was wont to make religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility in English, which was his native language. By his verse the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven." His sole surviving work is Cædmon's Hymn. Cynewulf, prolific author of "The Fates of the Apostles", "Juliana", "Elene", and "Christ II", is believed to have been either Northumbrian or Mercian.


title: Northumbria

text: From around 800, there had been waves of Danish raids on the coastlines of the British Isles. These raids terrorized the populace, but exposure to Danish society brought new opportunities for wealth and trade. In 865, instead of raiding, the Danes landed a large army in East Anglia, and had conquered a territory known as the Danelaw, including Northumbria, by 867. At first, the Scandinavian minority, while politically powerful, remained culturally distinct from the English populace. For example, only a few Scandinavian words, mostly military and technical, became part of Old English. By the early 900s, however, Scandinavian-style names for both people and places became increasingly popular, as did Scandinavian ornamentation on works of art, featuring aspects of Norse mythology, and figures of animals and warriors. Nevertheless, sporadic references to "Danes" in charters, chronicles, and laws indicate that during the lifetime of the Kingdom of Northumbria, most inhabitants of northeast England did not consider themselves Danish, and were not perceived as such by other Anglo-Saxons.


title: Northumbria

text: The synthesis of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian and Christian and Pagan visual motifs within the Danelaw can be illustrated by an examination of stone sculpture. However, the tradition of mixing pagan and Christian motifs is not unique to the Danelaw, and examples of such synthesis can be seen in previous examples, such as the Franks Casket. The Franks Casket, believed to have been produced in Northumbria, includes depictions of Germanic legends and stories of the founding Roman and the Roman Church and is dated to the early eighth century. The Gosforth Cross, dated to the early tenth century, stands at 4.4 meters and is richly decorated with carvings of mythical beasts, Norse gods, and Christian symbolism. Stone sculpture was not a practice of native Scandinavian culture, and the proliferation of stone monuments within the Danelaw shows the influence that the English had on Viking settlers. On one side of the Gosforth Cross is a depiction of the Crucifixion; whilst on the other are scenes from Ragnarok. The melding of these distinctive religious cultures can further be seen in the depiction of Mary Magdalene as a valkyrie, with a trailing dress and long pigtail. Although one can read the iconography as the triumph of Christianity over paganism, it is possible that in the process of gradual conversion the Vikings might have initially accepted the Christian god as an addition to the broad pantheon of Pagan gods. The inclusion of pagan traditions in visual culture reflects the creation of a distinctive Anglo-Scandinavian culture. Consequently, this indicates that conversion not only required a change in belief, but also necessitated its assimilation, integration, and modification into existing cultural structures.


title: Northumbria

text: Northumbria's economy centred around agriculture, with livestock and land being popular units of value in local trade. By the mid 800s, the Open field system was likely the pre-eminent mode of farming. Like much of eastern England, Northumbria exported grain, silver, hides, and slaves. Imports from Frankia included oil, luxury goods, and clerical supplies in the 700s. Especially after 793, raids, gifts, and trade with Scandinavians resulted in substantial economic ties across the North Sea.


title: Northumbria

text: When coinage (as opposed to bartering) regained popularity in the late 600s, Northumbrian coins featured kings' names, indicating royal control of currency. Royal currency was unique in Britain for a long time. King Aldfrith (685–705) minted Northumbria's earliest silver coins, likely in York. Later royal coinage bears the name of King Eadberht (738–758), as well as his brother, archbishop Ecgbert of York. These coins were primarily small silver sceattas, more suitable to small, everyday transactions than larger gold Frankish or Roman coins. During the reign of King Eanred the silver content of the coins declined until they were produced in copper alloy, these coins are commonly known as stycas, but the term is an antiquarian invention. Stycas remains in use throughout the kingdom until at least the 860s and possibly later. Larger bullion values can be seen in the silver ingots found in the Bedale Hoard, along with sword fittings and necklaces in gold and silver.


title: Northumbria

text: In the time of Bede, there were five languages in Britain: English, British, Irish, Pictish, and Latin. Northumbrian was one of four distinct dialects of Old English, along with Mercian, West Saxon, and Kentish. Analysis of written texts, brooches, runes and other available sources shows that Northumbrian vowel pronunciation differed from West Saxon.


title: Northumbria

text: Although loans borrowed from the Celtic Languages, such as the Common Brittonic language of the Britons, and the Old Irish of the Irish missionaries, into Old English were few, some place-names such as Deira and Bernicia derive their names from Celtic tribal origins.


title: Northumbria

text: In addition to the five languages present in Bede's day, Old Norse was added during the ninth century. This was due to the settlements of the Norse in the north and east of England, an area that became the Danelaw. This language had a strong influence on the dialect of Northumbria. These settlers gave the region many place-names from their language as well as contributing to the vocabulary, syntax, and grammar of Old English. Similarities in basic vocabulary between Old English and Old Norse may have led to dropping of their different inflectional endings. The number of borrowed words is conservatively estimated to be around nine-hundred in standard English but rises to the thousands in some dialects.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The Italian Social Republic (, ; RSI), known as the National Republican State of Italy (, SNRI) prior to December 1943 but more popularly known as the Republic of Salò ( ), was a German puppet state with limited diplomatic recognition which was created during the later part of World War II, that existed from the beginning of the German occupation of Italy in September 1943 until the surrender of German troops in Italy in May 1945. The German occupation triggered widespread national resistance against them and the Italian Social Republic, leading to the Italian Civil War.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The Italian Social Republic was the second and last incarnation of the Italian Fascist state, led by Benito Mussolini and his reformed anti-monarchist Republican Fascist Party. The newly-founded state declared Rome its capital but was "de facto" centred on Salò (hence its colloquial name), a small town on Lake Garda, near Brescia, where Mussolini and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were headquartered. The Italian Social Republic nominally exercised sovereignty in Northern and Central Italy, but was largely dependent on German troops to maintain control.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: In July 1943, after the Allies had pushed Italy out of North Africa and subsequently invaded Sicily, the Grand Council of Fascism—with the support of King Victor Emmanuel III—overthrew and arrested Mussolini. The new government began secret peace negotiations with the Allied powers. When the Armistice of Cassibile was announced 8 September, Nazi Germany was prepared and quickly intervened. German troops seized control of the northern half of Italy, freed Mussolini, and brought him to the German-occupied area to establish a satellite regime. The Italian Social Republic was proclaimed on 23 September 1943. Although the RSI claimed sovereignty over most of the Italian Peninsula, its "de facto" jurisdiction only extended to a vastly reduced portion of the country. The RSI received diplomatic recognition only from the Axis powers and their satellite states. Finland and Vichy France, while being in the German orbit, did not recognize it. Unofficial relations were maintained with Argentina, Portugal, Spain and, through commercial agents, Switzerland. The Vatican City did not recognize the RSI.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Around 25 April 1945, nineteen months after its founding, the RSI all but collapsed. In Italy, the day is known as Liberation Day ("festa della liberazione"). On that day, a general partisan uprising, alongside the efforts of Allied forces during their final offensive in Italy, managed to oust the Germans from Italy almost entirely. On 27 April, Italian partisans caught Mussolini, his mistress (Clara Petacci), several RSI ministers, and several other Italian Fascists, while they were attempting to flee. On 28 April, the partisans shot and killed Mussolini and most of the other captives, including Petacci. The RSI Minister of Defense Rodolfo Graziani surrendered what was left of the Italian Social Republic on 1 May, one day after the German forces in Italy capitulated.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: On 24 July 1943, after the Allied landings in Sicily, on a motion by Dino Grandi, the Grand Council of Fascism voted a motion of no confidence in Mussolini. Mussolini's authority had been undermined by a series of military defeats from the start of Italy's entry into the war during June 1940, including the bombing of Rome, the loss of the African colonies and the Allied invasions of Sicily and the southern Italian Peninsula.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The next day, King Victor Emmanuel III dismissed Mussolini from office, ordered him arrested and appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio as new Prime Minister. By this time, the monarchy, a number of Fascist government members and the general Italian population had grown tired of the futile war effort which had driven Italy into subordination and subjugation by Nazi Germany. The failed war effort left Mussolini humiliated at home and abroad as a "sawdust Caesar". The new government began secret negotiations with the Allied powers and made preparations for the capitulation of Italy. These surrender talks implied a commitment from Badoglio to leave the Axis alliance.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: While the Germans formally recognised the new "status quo" in Italian politics, they intervened by sending some of the best units of the Wehrmacht to Italy. This was done both to resist new Allied advances and to face the predictably imminent defection of Italy. While Badoglio continued to swear loyalty to Germany and the Axis powers, Italian government emissaries prepared to sign an armistice at Cassibile in Allied-occupied Sicily, which was finalized on 3 September.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: On 8 September, Badoglio announced Italy's armistice with the Allies (although termed an "armistice", its terms made it akin to an unconditional surrender). German Führer Adolf Hitler and his staff, long aware of the negotiations, acted immediately by ordering German troops to seize control of Northern and Central Italy. The Germans quickly occupied Italy, disarmed the Italian troops and took over all of the Italian Army's materials and equipment, meeting only limited resistance. The Germans also dissolved the Italian occupation zone in southeastern France and forced Italian troops stationed there to leave. The Italian armed forces were not given clear orders to resist the Germans after the armistice and so resistance to the German takeover was scattered and of little effect. King Victor Emmanuel made no effort to rally resistance to the Germans, instead fleeing with his retinue to the safety of the Allied lines. On 10 September 1943, after two days of battle between the "Wehrmacht" and the remnants of the Royal Italian Army, Rome fell to the Germans.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The new Italian government had moved Mussolini from place to place while he was in captivity in an attempt to foil any attempts at rescue. Despite this, the Germans eventually pinpointed Mussolini at the Hotel Campo Imperatore at Gran Sasso. On 12 September, Mussolini was freed by the Germans in Operation Eiche (directed by SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny) in the mountains of Abruzzo. After being freed, Mussolini was flown to Bavaria. Gathering what support he still had among the Italian population, his liberation made it possible for a new German-dependent Fascist Italian state to be created.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Three days following his rescue in the Gran Sasso raid, Mussolini was taken to Germany for a meeting with Hitler in Rastenburg at his headquarters in East Prussia. While Mussolini was in poor health and wanted to retire, Hitler wanted him to return to Italy and start a new Fascist state under the protection of the Wehrmacht. When Mussolini baulked, tired of the responsibilities of the war and unwilling to retake power, Hitler told him the alternative would be a German military administration that would treat Italy no differently from other occupied countries. Hitler also threatened to destroy Milan, Genoa and Turin unless Mussolini agreed to set up a revived Fascist government. Reluctantly, Mussolini agreed to Hitler's demands.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Mussolini returned to Italy and settled in Milan, from where on 15 September he announced the creation of the Republican Fascist Party and, three days later, the resumption of the war alongside Germany and Japan. The Duce immediately announced the formation of a new republican cabinet, although they actually came from a list chosen and appointed by Hitler himself. The Italian Social Republic was proclaimed on 23 September, with Mussolini as both chief of state and prime minister. The RSI claimed Rome as its capital, but the "de facto" capital became the small town of Salò on Lake Garda, midway between Milan and Venice, where Mussolini resided along with the foreign office of the RSI. While Rome itself was still under Axis control at the time, given the city's proximity to Allied lines and the threat of civil unrest, neither the Germans nor Mussolini himself wanted him to return to Rome.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: On 18 September, Mussolini made his first public address to the Italian people since his rescue, in which he commended the loyalty of Hitler as an ally while condemning Victor Emmanuel for betraying Italian Fascism. He declared: "It is not the regime that has betrayed the monarchy, it is the monarchy that has betrayed the regime". He also formally repudiated his previous support of the monarchy, saying: "When a monarchy fails in its duties, it loses every reason for being…The state we want to establish will be national and social in the highest sense of the word; that is, it will be Fascist, thus returning to our origins".


title: Italian Social Republic

text: From the start, the Italian Social Republic was little more than a puppet state dependent entirely upon Germany. Mussolini himself knew this; even as he stated in public that he was in full control of the RSI, he was well aware that he was little more than the "Gauleiter" of Lombardy. The SS kept Mussolini under what amounted to house arrest; it monitored his communications and controlled his travel, when those who really ruled the state were the German General Plenipotentiary Rudolf Rahn and SS-"Obergruppenführer" Karl Wolff, the commander of the German occupying forces in Italy.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The RSI had no constitution or organized economy, and its financing was dependent entirely on funding from Berlin. German forces themselves had little respect for Mussolini's failed fascism, and considered the regime merely as a tool for maintaining order, such as repressing the Italian partisans. This work was also carried out by the infamous Pietro Koch and the Banda Koch on Germany's behalf.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The RSI received diplomatic recognition from only Germany, Imperial Japan and their puppet states. Even the otherwise sympathetic Spain refused to establish formal diplomatic relations with the RSI.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The RSI took revenge against the 19 members who had voted against Mussolini on the Grand Council with the Verona trial ("processo di Verona") which handed down a death sentence to all of the accused but one. Only six of the 19 were in RSI custody (Giovanni Marinelli, Carlo Pareschi, Luciano Gottardi, Tullio Cianetti, Emilio De Bono and Mussolini's own son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano). With the exception of Tullio Cianetti, who received a life sentence, they were all executed on 11 January 1944 in the fort of San Procolo in Verona.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The changing political and military situation re-opened questions regarding the status of Italian territories, particularly those with German-speaking majorities that were formerly under Austrian rule. Previously, Hitler had vigorously suppressed any campaigning for the return of lands such as South Tyrol in order to maintain good relations with his Italian ally. In the aftermath of the Kingdom of Italy's abandonment of the Axis on 8 September 1943, Germany seized and "de facto" incorporated some Italian territories. However, Hitler refused to officially annex South Tyrol in spite of urging by local German officials and instead supported having the RSI hold official sovereignty over these territories and forbade all measures that would give the impression of official annexation of South Tyrol. However, in practice the territory of South Tyrol within the boundaries defined by Germany as "Operationszone Alpenvorland" that included Trento, Bolzano and Belluno were "de facto" incorporated into Germany's "Reichsgau Tirol-Vorarlberg" and administered by its "Gauleiter" Franz Hofer. The region identified by Germany as "Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland" that included Udine, Gorizia, Trieste, Pola and Fiume were "de facto" incorporated into "Reichsgau Kärnten" and administered by its "Gauleiter" Friedrich Rainer.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: On 10 September 1943, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) declared that the Treaties of Rome of 18 May 1941 with the Kingdom of Italy were null and void and annexed the portion of Dalmatia that had been ceded to Italy as part of those treaties. The NDH attempted to annex Zara, which had been a recognized territory of Italy since 1919, but Germany prevented the NDH from doing this. Because of these actions, the RSI held the NDH in contempt and refused to have diplomatic relations with the NDH or to recognize its territorial claims.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: After the Italian capitulation, the Italian Islands of the Aegean were occupied by the Germans (see Dodecanese campaign). During the German occupation, the islands remained under the nominal sovereignty of the RSI but were "de facto" subject to the German military command.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The Italian concession of Tientsin in China was ceded by the RSI to the Japanese puppet Wang Jingwei regime.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: During the existence of the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini, whose former government had banned trade unions and strikes, began to make increasingly populist appeals to the working class. He claimed to regret many of the decisions made earlier in supporting the interests of big business and promised a new beginning if the Italian people would be willing to grant him a second chance. Mussolini claimed that he had never totally abandoned his left-wing influences, insisting he had attempted to nationalize property in 1939–1940 but had been forced to delay such action for tactical reasons related to the war. With the removal of the monarchy, Mussolini claimed the full ideology of Fascism could be pursued; and to gain popular support he reversed over twenty years of Fascist policy of backing private property and relative economic independence by ordering the nationalization of all companies with over 100 employees. Mussolini even reached out to ex-communist Nicola Bombacci to help him in spreading the image that Fascism was a progressive movement. The economic policy of the RSI was given the name "Socialization" and Mussolini had even considered the idea of calling his new republic the "Italian ‘Socialist’ Republic". In practice, little resulted from the declared socialization of the economy. Unions did not exert real control of their management and took no part in state planning (as they had the power to do on paper after the socialization). The Italian industrial sector was excluded from the new reforms by the Germans and Italian industrialists were opposed to the changes in any case. The Italian labour force (large parts of which had remained leftist despite fascist rule) regarded socialization as a sham and responded with a massive strike on 1 March 1944.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: In Greece, while the government of the Kingdom of Italy surrendered and many Italian soldiers in the Aegean were tired of the war and had become opposed to Mussolini, Italian Fascist loyalists remained allied to Germany in the Greek campaign; German forces in Greece convinced 10,000 Italians in the Aegean to continue to support their war effort.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: In 1944, Mussolini urged Hitler to focus on destroying Britain rather than the Soviet Union, as Mussolini claimed that it was Britain which had turned the conflict into a world war and that the British Empire must be destroyed in order for peace to come in Europe. Mussolini wanted to conduct a small offensive along the Gothic Line against the Allies with his new RSI Divisions; in December 1944, the Alpine Division "Monte Rosa" with some German battalions fought the Battle of Garfagnana with some success. As the situation became desperate with Allied forces in control of most of Italy and from February 1945 resumed pushing the Axis forces north of the Gothic Line, Mussolini declared that "he would fight to the last Italian" and spoke of turning Milan into the "Stalingrad of Italy", where Fascism would make its last glorious fight. Despite such strong rhetoric, Mussolini considered evacuating Fascists into Switzerland, although this was opposed by Germany, which instead proposed that Mussolini and key Fascist officials be taken into exile in Germany. Further disintegration of support for his government occurred as fascist and German military officials secretly tried to negotiate a truce with Allied forces, without consulting either Mussolini or Hitler.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Women volunteers served in uniform as noncombatants in paramilitary units and police formations ("Servizio Ausiliario Femminile"). The commander was the brigadier general Piera Gatteschi Fondelli.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Smaller units like the Black Brigades ("Brigate nere") led by Alessandro Pavolini and the Decima Flottiglia MAS led by Junio Valerio Borghese (called ""principe nero"", the Black Prince) fought for the RSI during its entire existence. The Germans were satisfied if these units were able to participate in anti-partisan activities. While varying in their effectiveness, some of these units surpassed expectations.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: In March 1944, the bulk of the 1st Italian volunteers Storm Brigade were sent to the Anzio beachhead where they fought alongside their German allies, receiving favourable reports and taking heavy losses. In recognition of their performance, Heinrich Himmler declared the unit to be fully integrated into the Waffen SS.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: On 16 October 1943, the Rastenburg Protocol was signed with Nazi Germany and the RSI was allowed to raise division-sized military formations. This protocol allowed Marshal Rodolfo Graziani to raise four RSI divisions totalling 52,000 men. In July 1944, the first of these divisions completed training and was sent to the front.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Recruiting military forces was difficult for the RSI as most of the Italian Army had been interned by German forces in 1943, many military-aged Italians had been conscripted into forced labour in Germany and few wanted to participate in the war. The RSI became so desperate for soldiers that it granted convicts freedom if they would join the army and the sentence of death was imposed on anyone who opposed being conscripted. Autonomous military forces in the RSI also fought against the Allies including the notorious Decima Flottiglia MAS of Prince Junio Valerio Borghese. Borghese held no allegiance to Mussolini and even suggested that he would take him prisoner if he could.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: During the winter of 1944–1945, armed Italians were on both sides of the Gothic Line. On the Allied side were four Italian groups of volunteers from the old Italian army. These Italian volunteers were equipped and trained by the British. On the Axis side were four RSI divisions. Three of the RSI divisions, the 2nd Italian "Littorio" Infantry Division, the 3rd Italian "San Marco" Marine Division and the 4th Italian "Monterosa" Alpini Division were allocated to the LXXXXVII "Liguria" Army under Graziani and were placed to guard the western flank of the Gothic Line facing France. The fourth RSI division, the 1st Italian "Italia" Infantry Division, was attached to the German 14th Army in a sector of the Apennine Mountains thought least likely to be attacked.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: On 26 December 1944, several sizeable RSI military units, including elements of the 4th Italian "Monterosa Division" Alpine Division and the 3rd Italian "San Marco" Marine Division, participated in Operation Winter Storm. This was a combined German and Italian offensive against the 92nd Infantry Division. The battle was fought in the Apennines. While limited in scale, this was a successful offensive and the RSI units did their part.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The RSI military was under the command of General Alfredo Guzzoni while Field Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, the former governor-general of Italian Libya, was the RSI's Minister of Defense and commander-in-chief of the German Army Group Liguria. Mussolini, as "Duce" and head of state of RSI assumed supreme command over all military forces of the RSI.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: In February 1945, the 92nd Infantry Division again came up against RSI units. This time it was Bersaglieri of the 1st Italian "Italia" Infantry Division. The Italians successfully halted the United States division's advance.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: However, the situation continued to deteriorate for the Axis forces on Gothic Line. By mid-April, the final Allied offensive in Italy had led German defences to collapse. At the end of that month, the last remaining troops of RSI were bottled up along with two Wehrmacht Divisions at Collecchio by 1st Brazilian Division being forced to surrender after some days of fighting.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: On 29 April, Graziani surrendered and was present at Caserta when a representative of German General Heinrich von Vietinghoff-Scheel signed the unconditional instrument of surrender for all Axis forces in Italy, but since the Allies had never recognised the RSI Graziani's signature was not required at Caserta. The surrender was to take effect on 2 May; Graziani ordered the RSI forces under his command to lay down their arms on 1 May.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The National Republican Air Force ("Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana" or ANR) was the air force of Italian Social Republic and also the air unit of National Republican Army in World War II. Its tactical organization was: 3 Fighter Groups, 1 Air Torpedo Bomber Group, 1 Bomber Group and other Transport and minor units. The ANR worked closely with German Air Force ("Luftwaffe") in Northern Italy, even if the Germans unsuccessfully tried to disband the ANR forcing its pilots to enlist in the "Luftwaffe".


title: Italian Social Republic

text: In 1944, after the withdrawal of all German fighter units in the attempt to stop the increased Allied offensive on the German mainland, ANR fighter groups were left alone and heavily outnumbered to face the massive Allied air offensive over Northern Italy. In the operation time of 1944 and 1945, the ANR managed to shoot down 262 Allied aircraft with the loss of 158 in action.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Little of the Regia Marina (Royal Italian Navy) joined the RSI. This was because the bulk of the Italian navy was ordered to steam to Malta at the time of the armistice, out of reach of the Germans and the RSI. The RSI's National Republican Navy ("Marina Nazionale Repubblicana" or MNR) only reached a twentieth the size of the co-belligerent Italian fleet. The RSI Navy largely consisted of nine motor torpedo boats (two large and seven small), dozens of MTSM small motor torpedo boats and MTM explosive motorboats. The National Republican Navy also operated fifteen "CB"-class midget submarines (ten in the Adriatic and five in the Black Sea) and one larger submarine, "CM1".


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Troops of the Decima Flottiglia MAS (elite Italian frogman corps) fought primarily as a land unit of the RSI.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The fall of the Fascist regime in Italy and the disbandment of the MVSN saw the establishment of the National Republican Guard ("Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana" or GNR), the Republican Police Corps ("Corpo di Polizia Repubblicana") and the emergence of the Black Brigades ("brigate nere"). The GNR consisted of former MVSN, carabinieri, soldiers, Italian Africa Police and others still loyal to the Fascist cause, while the Republican Police Corps was the successor agency of the Public security complex formed by the Directorate of Public Security and the Public Security Agents Corps. The Black Brigade was formed by the new fascist party members both young and old. Both units fought alongside Nazi "Schutzstaffel" (SS) counterparts in an extensive anti-partisan war. The Black Brigades committed many atrocities in their fight against the Italian resistance movement and political enemies. On 15 August 1944, the GNR became part of the Army.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The Government of the Italian Social Republic held office from 23 September 1943 until 25 April 1945, a total of . Its head was Benito Mussolini.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The Government redacted a Constitution for the Italian Social Republic, but it was never discussed or approved. On 13 October 1943, it was announced that a Constitutent Assembly would be called to write a new Constitution, but that was cancelled by Mussolini on 14 November and delayed until after the end of the war.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: The RSI was led by the Republican Fascist Party, established on 18 September 1943 out of the disbanded National Fascist Party. On 14 February 1945 Mussolini authorized the formation of a second political party called National Republican Socialist Rally (later rebranded into Italian Socialist Republican Party) under the leadership of Edmondo Cione: the party supported a leftist view of fascism, strongly focused on the socialization of the economy and included several former socialists, such as Pulvio Zocchi, Carlo Silvestri and Walter Mocchi. It was largely insignificant and its membership is unknown.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: While the RSI supported Nazi Germany, it allowed the Italian Fascist movement to build a completely totalitarian state. During the preceding twenty years of Fascist association with the Savoy monarchy of the Kingdom of Italy, the Fascists had been restricted in some of their actions by the monarchy. The formation of the RSI allowed Mussolini to at last be the official head of an Italian state and it allowed the Fascists to return to their earlier republican stances. Most prominent figures of post-war Italian far-right politics (parliamentary or extraparliamentary) were in some way associated with the experience of the RSI. Among them were Filippo Anfuso, Pino Romualdi, Rodolfo Graziani, Junio Valerio Borghese, Licio Gelli and Giorgio Almirante. Most of the 8,000 Italian Jews who died under the Holocaust were killed during the 20 months of the Salò regime.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: A number of postage stamps were issued by the Republic of Salò. Initially, existing Italian issues were overprinted with a fasces, or the initials "G.N.R." for the Republican National Guard. Later the government designed and printed three series, all of which are very common.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Banknotes in 50, 100, 500, and 1000 lire denomination were printed by the Republic. As issuer, the country was not mentioned on them, but rather only the Bank of Italy.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1975 film "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom" is an adaptation of Marquis de Sade's "The 120 Days of Sodom", set in the Republic of Salò instead of 18th century France. It uses the source material as an allegory; the atrocities in the movie did not actually happen, while most of the choices of milieus, clothing, uniforms, weapons and other details are historically correct. Roberto Benigni's 1997 "Life is Beautiful" is also set in the Republic of Salò.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Bernardo Bertolucci's 1976 "Novecento" set his story in Emilia, being at the time a province of the Italian Social Republic, even though this is never mentioned in the movie. "Wild Blood" tells the true story of the Fascist film stars Luisa Ferida and Osvaldo Valenti and their support for the Republic.


title: Italian Social Republic

text: Futurist writer and poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a Mussolini loyalist who had helped shape Fascist philosophy, remained in the RSI as a propagandist until his death from a heart attack at Bellagio in December 1944.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total 2020 population of 864,835.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the "Nine Square Plan". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the "Nine Square Plan" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the "Cultural Capital of Connecticut" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in America, producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname "The Elm City".


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Before Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and subsisted off local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 1637 a small party of Puritans reconnoitered the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's excellent potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for protection.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: By 1640, "Quinnipiac's" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed Newhaven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. (However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden.) The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbid the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Economic disaster struck Newhaven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the "Great Shippe") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance stymied New Haven's development versus the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. Later a third judge, John Dixwell, joined the others.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 1664 New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Some members of the New Haven Colony seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing New Haven as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the name of the Collegiate School was changed to Yale College.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: For over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, as in the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the government in Britain could be resolved short of rebellion. On 23 April 1775, which is still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day, the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven entered the struggle against the British parliament. Under Captain Benedict Arnold, they broke into the powder house to arm themselves and began a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: On July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the 3,500-person town. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, so many of the town's colonial features were preserved.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the "Connecticut Compromise", became the new city's first mayor.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as "The Arsenal of America". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship "Amistad" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqué, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See "Museums" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 1954; then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See "Redevelopment" below).


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See "Political Culture" below for more information).


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: From the 1960s through the late 1990s, central areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Since approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In recent years, downtown retail options have increased with the opening of new stores such as Urban Oufitters, J Crew, Origins, American Apparel, Gant Clothing, and an Apple Store, joining older stores such as Barnes & Noble and Raggs Clothing. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population. A Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Major projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent "Ricci v. DeStefano" decision the court found 5–4 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, "This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served." Set for construction in 2013, the "Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail" project will cost approximately $1 billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east–west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the "Regicides" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as "The Three Judges". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the "Great/Giant Steps" which run up the rock's cliffside.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: According to the Köppen classification, New Haven is "cfa", or a humid subtropical climate, however it borders on a hot-summer humid continental climate. The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are cold with both rain and snow fall. The weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound—although, like other marine areas, differences in temperature between areas right along the coastline and areas a mile or two inland can be large at times. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname "Elm City" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Downtown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: As of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 29 years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: It is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is a predominantly Roman Catholic city, as the city's Dominican, Irish, Italian, Mexican, Ecuadorian, and Puerto Rican populations are overwhelmingly Catholic. The city is part of the Archdiocese of Hartford. Jews also make up a considerable portion of the population, as do Black Baptists. There is a growing number of (mostly Puerto Rican) Pentecostals as well. There are churches for all major branches of Christianity within the city, multiple store-front churches, ministries (especially in working-class Latino and Black neighborhoods), a mosque, many synagogues (including two yeshivas), and other places of worship; the level of religious diversity in the city is high.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: A study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale – New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating.< Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Industry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). Vion Pharmaceuticals is traded OTC (OTC BB: VIONQ.OB). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Justin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (-4% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven was the subject of " Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, "Democracy in America". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential "God and Man at Yale". William Lee Miller's "The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: George Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: During the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On 29 June 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, "Ricci v. DeStefano", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Garry Trudeau, creator of the political "Doonesbury" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname "The Doones". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Crime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Violent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second year in a row). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the "24/7 Wall Street Blog", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: However, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: There are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Hopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Livability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called "apizza", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered "plain" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as "scamorza" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: A second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: A third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: During weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale – New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Popular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: A large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Taste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May, 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include "Oklahoma!" (which was also written in New Haven), "Carousel", "South Pacific", "My Fair Lady", "The King and I", and "The Sound of Music", and the Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire".


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Bow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Artspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical "Freedom Schooner Amistad", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the "Quinnipiack" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The "Quinnipiack" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as The Breakfast, Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop. Other local venues include Cafe Nine, BAR, Pacific Standard Tavern, Stella Blues, Three Sheets, Firehouse 12, and Rudy's.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Hardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: In the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is served by the daily "New Haven Register", the weekly "alternative" "New Haven Advocate" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the "Hartford Courant"), the online daily "New Haven Independent", and the monthly "Grand News Community Newspaper." Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The "Register" also backs "PLAY" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the "Yale Daily News", the weekly "Yale Herald" and a humor tabloid, "Rumpus Magazine".


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: WTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams—including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972–2002), and Yale Field (1928–present).


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: When John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts "The Game" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Greater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: The New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: New Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the "America's Favorite Architecture" list created in 2007.


title: New Haven, Connecticut

text: Several residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.