The Albanians (Arbereshë) from Anamalit who fled to Tuscany in 1756

The Albanians (Arbereshë) from Anamalit who fled to Tuscany in 1756

After nine years of research in archives throughout Italy by the Anamalan scholar Giovanni Saitto, the history of the Albanian colony that arrived from Pianiano in the winter of 1761 has finally come to light. The book, with its rich documentation, has been published under the patronage of the Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia.

Their places of origin, all from the area of ​​Buna, Anamali, are as follows: Bria, Budva, Calmet, Mida, Pali, Pistuli, San Giorgio alla Boiana, Scutari and Zadrima. The toponym Budua is found on some medieval maps near Buna on the Mountain Side but today there is no village identified with this name. Some families were from Zadrima and Kallmeti.


In 1756, a group of thirty-nine families from the Shkodra area, seeking to escape the Ottoman sultanate and the Muslim religion, decided to leave their native land and establish a new home elsewhere. Having landed in Ancona after a long and dangerous sea voyage on a ship flying the Venetian flag, they moved, with the authorization of the papal government, to Pianiano, a town in the Duchy of Castro in the Tuscia region of Viterbo.

Their interest in recruiting the labor force needed to clear the uncultivated and overpopulated lands, however, clashed with the inadequacy of the available resources and, above all, with malaria, which was constantly claiming victims. The events of this Albanian community displaced in Italy were further complicated, almost fictionally, by a new massive emigration from the Papal States to the regions of the Kingdom of Naples, in the hope of finding better living conditions.

It describes the new exodus, the departure in Civitavecchia and the landing in Naples, the situation of extreme poverty and internal discord, which resulted in a group that accepted the invitation of Prince Placido Imperiale to move to the colonization that he promoted in Poggio Imperiale.

The narrative presents, more or less in passing, fragments and figures from contemporary society: popes and monarchs, priests and bishops, commoners and aristocrats, merchants and peasants, in a union that has the harsh and concrete flavor of real life, instead of the idealized and abstract one of official stereotypical representations.

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