Ask natives and visitors to name popular, thriving enclaves in San Diego, and Little Italy will come in near the top on most folks’ lists. In recent decades, the historic fishing community has been reborn, and now serves as a beacon to those in search of great Italian restaurants, as well as shops, art galleries and an eclectic housing stock.

The most venerable, continuously existing neighborhood business district in downtown San Diego, Little Italy historically served as home to the thousands of immigrant Italian and Portuguese fishermen who made their livings on the ocean. It also housed the canneries that processed their catches. Together, the fisherman and canneries helped burnish the city’s early repute as “tuna capital of the Western U.S.”