Arbëreshë people (Albanese people in Italy)

**~~Kosovo je Sjrbia~~** · 04-25-2011, 04:31 PM

The Arbëreshë are a linguistic and ethnic Albanian minority community living in southern Italy, especially the regions of Apulia, Basilicata, Molise, Calabria and Sicily.[2] They settled in Southern Italy in the 15th to 18th centuries AD in several waves of migrations, following the death of the Albanian national hero George Kastrioti Skanderbeg and the gradual conquest of Albania and throughout the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks. The Arbëreshë have their own distinct culture and have been able to preserve the original Albanian identity[3] over the centuries. Over the centuries the arbëreshë have managed to maintain and develop their identities, thanks to their stubbornness and cultural value exercised mainly by the two religious communities of the Eastern Rite Byzantine Catholics, based in Calabria, the "Collegio Corsini" (1732) and then "Corsini-Sant'Adriano" in 1794 and Sicily in the "Seminario Greco-Albanese of Palermo" (1735) then transferred to Piana degli Albanesi in 1945. Today, most of the fifty arbëreshë communities still preserve the Byzantine Catholics belonging to the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church of Eastern Rite. They belong to two eparchies: to Lungro for Arbëreshë of southern Italy, and that of Piana degli Albanesi for Arbëreshë of Sicily.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arb%C3%ABresh%C3%AB