Casa Italiana
The Casa Italiana is a monumental building in front of the International Affairs Building on Amsterdam Avenue, which flies the Italian and Columbia flags side-by-side (previously, the Italian flag flew next to the American one, but the US standard was replaced in recent years).
The building's past is shadily connected to Italian fascism. It may have been paid for by Benito Mussolini; his desk still resides in the building. A once semiautonomous "university within the university," its connections to Italy were grounds for a 1935 student protest against the institution relating to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.
Technically owned by the Italian government once more, it houses the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. Its main room hosts quite a few black-tie university events.
