The Hill
Atwells Avenue,
and everything on it.
Federal Hill is the Italian heart of Providence, and it has been for well over a century. Palermo's sits at 298, up the avenue from the arch.
Since the 1890s
They came for work and stayed for good.
Italian families began settling on Federal Hill in the 1890s, most of them from the south, most of them with a trade. They opened bakeries and butcher shops, salumerias and cafes, and they turned one avenue into the place the whole city came to eat.
A hundred and some years later, that is still what Atwells is. The names on the awnings have changed a few times. The reason people drive across the state has not.
Three things everybody on the Hill knows
And one of them people get wrong.
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La Pigna
That is a pinecone, not a pineapple
The bronze thing hanging from the gateway arch over Atwells is La Pigna, a pinecone. In Italy it is an old symbol of welcome and abundance. Half of Providence has been calling it the pineapple for forty years, and nobody on the Hill has ever managed to stop them.
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The Avenue
Atwells is the whole neighborhood
Bakeries, butchers, cafes, and restaurants, one after another, from the arch up the hill. It is a street that still does business the old way: cash, first names, and a line out the door on a Friday.
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The Square
DePasquale Square, and the fountain
Off the avenue there is a small plaza with a fountain in the middle of it, tables all around, and people sitting at them from spring until it gets too cold. It is the closest thing Rhode Island has to a piazza.
Palermo's today
New hands. Same avenue.
Palermo's is under new ownership, and the room shows it. The place was remodeled, the kitchen was rebuilt around better meat and dough made fresh every day, and prices came down across most of the menu. The bar in back is new too, and there has never been a cover to sit at it.
The goal is simple, and it is the owner's own way of putting it.
We are very proud of our staff, and we are working to make Palermo's a family type atmosphere. Ron, owner
What we are
A pizzeria that pours a serious martini.
Not a lounge that happens to sell pizza. Not a pizzeria with a dusty bottle of vermouth. Both sides are real, both run late, and you can do the whole night without leaving the building.