When Francesco Felice Buonfantino departed from Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, it was September 6, 2025. Almost a year later, on August 10, he arrived in New York on board Nesea, a 13-metre sailboat, carrying with him the flag of the National Museum of Italian Migration of Genoa, the MEI, destined to Ellis Island.
The journey has put together the two activities that have accompanied much of his life. Buonfantino is a Neapolitan architect, founder partner and president of Gnosis Progetti, the study that has worked on the realization of the MEI and which is also involved in the project of the future Museum of the Migration of Naples. But he is also an experienced sailor: in the biography published by Gnosis Progetti he tells of having crossed four times the Atlantic Ocean. His previous editorial biography already attributed him over 50 thousand miles of navigation and participation in several high-rise races.
This time the Atlantic had a symbolic meaning. When Nesea cleared the port of Castellammare del Golfo, on board with Buonfantino there were his companion and some friends. The boat carried the MEI flag with the goal, established from the start, to deliver it to Ellis Island, one of the most important places in the history of European emigration in the United States.
The route did not reproduce that of the ships that between the nineteenth and twentieth century brought the Italian emigrants directly to the United States. Nesea crossed the Atlantic to Martinique, then sailed north through the Caribbean and the Bahamas to Florida. From Miami, he took the Intracoastal Waterway, the system of canals, rivers and protected sea traits that runs along the eastern American coast, and followed it to New York.
During the different stages Buonfantino met descendants of Italian emigrants and collected stories and memories preserved in their families. The last part of the trip led him to meet the Italian American community in New York and finally to Ellis Island, where the flag of the Genoese museum was delivered.
The destination gives meaning to the whole trip. Between 1892 and 1954, some 12 million immigrants were sent to Ellis Island, including many Italians. For those arriving from Europe, the island in the Bay of New York was the place of health and administrative checks before entering the country. Today the buildings of the old immigration center are home to the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration.
The bond of Buonfantino with this story passes above all from his work. The MEI of Genoa, inaugurated in 2022, is located in the Commenda di San Giovanni di Pré, near the port from which many Italians departed towards the Americas. Gnosis Progetti is also working at the museum dedicated to the emigration that should arise in the Immacolatella Vecchia, in the port of Naples.
The journey of Nesea has therefore physically linked three places related to the same history: South Italy from which many emigrants left, an Italian museum built to preserve their memory and Ellis Island, where for many began their lives in the United States.
The flag arrived in New York will remain on the island as evidence of the relationship between the MEI and the American immigration museum. For Buonfantino the arrival ended a journey lasted eleven months; not its first crossing of the Atlantic, but the one in which the craft of architect and passion for sailing had the same destination.
L’articolo A Neapolitan architect arrived in New York by sailing to remember the Italian emigration from IlNewyorkese.
