Ithaca (/ˈɪθəkə/) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. With a population of 32,108 as of the 2020 census, Ithaca is the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area, which includes all 103,558 residents of Tompkins County, of which it is the county seat. The city is named after the Greek island of Ithaca, home of the protagonist Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.
Ithaca is a college town best known for hosting Cornell University, an Ivy League university founded in 1865, as well as Ithaca College. Until the late 18th century, present-day Ithaca was inhabited by the Cayuga people of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. In 1789, the federal and state governments began granting land in the area, known as the Central New York Military Tract, to compensate veterans of the American Revolutionary War. Located in the township of Ulysses, or Tract 22, Ithaca was populated by white settlers in 1794 and formally established in 1821.
