Six centuries on, Arberesh community preserves traditions

TIRANA, Nov. 9 – Settled in southern Italy since the late 15th century, the Albanian Arberesh community in Italy is being commemorated with several special events organized by the Italian Institute of Culture in Tirana.
Events opened on Thursday, Nov. 10 with a photo exhibition by Carlo Pelicano and several short films and documentaries followed Thursday evening’s events at the Tirana express art centre near the train station in Tirana.
Rockarberesh, a documentary by Italy’s Salvo Cucca, shows the identity of Arberesh in Italy through the story of two rock bands was also featured in the opening night.
Friday, Nov. 11 will bring a lecture on the history of the Albanian Arberesh community in Italy. The event dedicated to Arberesh culture will conclude with a live concert by Carlo Pelicano dedicated to Arberesh folklore music.
Earlier this year, Professor Elio Miracco of the Albanian language and literature at the La Sapienza University of Rome elaborated on the contribution to Italy’s unification by the Arberesh community.
According to the Minority Rights Group International, the ethnic Albanian community, known as the Arb쳥sh, live in 49 mountain towns and villages from the Abruzzi Appenines to the south of Italy and Sicily. The communities are dispersed among seven regions (Abruzzi, Molise, Puglia, Campania, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily) and nine provinces (Pescara, Campobasso, Avellino, Foggia, Taranto, Potenza, Cosenza, Catanzaro and Palermo). Some new Albanian immigrants have joined the ethnic Albanians.
The ethnic Albanian (Arb쳥sh) dialects of Italy bear little resemblance to the standard language or dialects of Albania, as they have been cut off from the main language for around 500 years.
Members of the Arb쳥sh community are mostly Byzantine Catholics and Latin Rite Catholics.
The main Albanian migration to Italy came from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries as the Ottomans pushed them west, although some Albanians had already settled there from the thirteenth century. From the seventeenth century, Albanians in Molise and Puglia were forced to give up their Orthodox faith in the wave of religious repression aimed at eradicating the Orthodox faith in southern Italy. There was further immigration of Christian Albanians fleeing Muslim persecution in the eighteenth century.
Albanian-speakers in Italy number an estimated 250,000.