After two years at the Outer Harbor, Buffalo's Galbani Italian Heritage Festival will be heading downtown this summer.

Festival officials announced Saturday that the event will be held in Niagara Square July 20-21, with vendors filling the square and two blocks of Delaware Avenue between Niagara Square and Huron Street.

"That's what the people wanted. They wanted us back on the streets," said Chris DelPrince, a festival board member and event planner.

He said the $5 admission charge imposed at the Outer Harbor site will be abolished.

The festival moved there in 2017, leaving the Hertel Avenue site it had used since the late 1980s. But DelPrince said the festival started as a lawn fete at St. Anthony's Catholic Church on Court Street in the 1950s, so in a sense the festival is returning to its downtown roots. It moved to Connecticut Street in the 1970s before relocating to Hertel Avenue.