The popular Italian Family Festa is the oldest and largest event of its kind on the West Coast. The Festa has shared the full richness of being "Italian" with hundreds of thousands of patrons. It has become a superb showcase in the folklore of glorious Italy, with its Italian Village atmosphere, food, costumes, art and photo exhibits, games, and musical entertainment.

It's purpose was to honor the City of San Jose during the 1977 Bicentennial celebration. It was the first ethnic festival to be held in downtown San Jose. Our Festa helped to identify San Jose as the "City of Festivals" and as a diverse ethnic community that promotes the achievements of many cultures. This inspired a number of ethnic organizations to hold their festivals in downtown San Jose and influenced their festival formats.

Featured at our Festa is the pony-drawn San Jose Italian Festa Cart which is covered with paintings and sculpture of San Jose history. It has been a display item by local social organizations . The Festival also includes grape stomping contests, a cheese rolling contest, a salami toss game, expanded bocce ball games and exhibitions, ballroom dancing in a tented area, a Sunday night Tarantella dance contest, costume contest, pizza toss demonstration, Italian card game playing and instruction, the Historic Italian Photo Exhibition, the Christian Cross exhibition, and a Sunday morning Christian Mass.

An essential part of our Festa deals with the promotion of Italian culture, and that includes food. Our entertainment includes local performers who perform some non Italian music, songs and dances. Varied arts and crafts vendors sell products representing many ethnic cultures.