La Guardia was born in Greenwich Village, New York City on December 12, 1882. His father, Achille La Guardia, was a Catholic native of Cerignola, Italy. His mother, Irene Luzzatto Coen, was a Jewish native of Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; his maternal grandmother Fiorina (Luzzatto) Coen was a Luzzatto, a member of the prestigious Italian-Jewish family of scholars, kabbalists, and poets and had among her ancestors the famous rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto. La Guardia's parents met and married in Trieste.