Florence set to lose US consulate under major overhaul of US state department.
The mayor of Florence has blasted the looming closure of the Italian city’s US consulate as part of a sweeping reorganisation of the state department by the Trump administration.
The major overhaul, which would see 10 embassies and 17 consulates shut down, was formally presented to congress by US secretary of state Marco Rubio on Thursday.
Rubio has described the state department in its current form as “bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition.”
The US consulate in Florence is included in the planned closures, a move strongly criticised by the city’s mayor Sara Funaro who said her administration will do all that it can to contest the move.
Funaro described the move as “a reckless decision to the detriment of the many Americans who study and work in Florence, an unmotivated choice that interrupts a historic relationship with the city”.
She said that the Tuscan city shares “a strong and consolidated bond with the US, demonstrated by the large number of universities, businesses and the many students and workers present in the city who will now lose an important interlocutor.”
Funaro said the closure of Florence’s US consulate would be “a slap in the face to our history, our present and our future and to a vast heritage of relationships and a loss to American citizens.”
The first US consulate in Tuscany was established in the port city of Livorno in 1794. The first US Consular Agent to serve Florence was James Ombrosi who was accredited on 15 May 1819.
The US consulate in Florence, located on Lungarno Vespucci, is the country’s smallest post in Italy with 18 staff and three foreign service officers.
Italy is home to two other US consulates – in Milan and Naples – in addition to the US embassy in Rome.
