page_title: Albanians
section_title: Italy
hierarchical_section_title: Albanians / Distribution / Italy
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Panoramica di it:Piana degli Albanesi. Foto scattata da me.
context_page_description: The Albanians are an ethnic group native to the Balkan Peninsula and are identified by a common Albanian ancestry, culture, history and language. They primarily live in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia as well as in Croatia, Greece, Italy and Turkey. They also constitute a diaspora with several communities established across Europe, the Americas and Oceania.
  The ethnogenesis of the Albanians and their language is a matter of controversy among historians and ethnologists. They are mentioned for the first time in historical records from the 11th century as a tribe living across the mountainous region of the Mat and Drin rivers in the Western Balkans. The Albanian diaspora has its roots in migration from the Middle Ages initially across Southern Europe and eventually across wider Europe and the New World. Between the 13th and 18th centuries, sizeable numbers migrated to escape various social, economic or political difficulties. One population, the Arvanites, settled Southern Greece between the 13th and 16th centuries assimilating into and now self-identifying as Greeks.
context_section_description: The Italian Peninsula across the Adriatic Sea has attracted Albanian people for more than half a millennium often due to its immediate proximity. Albanians in Italy later became important in establishing the fundamentals of the Albanian Renaissance and maintaining the Albanian culture.
  The Arbëreshë people came sporadically in several small and large cycles initially as Stratioti mercenaries in service of the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily and the Republic of Venice. Larger migration waves occurred after the death of Skanderbeg and the capture of Krujë and Shkodër by the Ottomans to escape the forthcoming political and religious changes.
  Today, Albanians in Italy constitute one of the largest ethnolinguistic minority groups and their status is protected by law. The total number of Arbëreshës is approximately 260,000 scattered across Sicily, Calabria and Apulia. There are Italian Albanians in the Americas especially in such countries as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Canada and the United States.
  Centuries later, at the end of the 20th century occurred another and the largest migration cycle of Albanians to Italy surpassing the earlier migration of the Arbëreshë. Their migration stemmed from decades of severe social and political oppression and isolation from the outside world under the communist regime led by Enver Hoxha.
  Between 2015 and 2016, the number of Albanians regularly residing in Italy was numbered to be around 480,000 and 500,000. Tuscany, Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna represent the regions with the strongest presence of the modern Albanian population in Italy. In 2012, 41.5% of the Albanian population were counted as Muslim, 38.9% as Christian including 27.7% as Roman Catholic and 11% as Eastern Orthodox and 17.8% as Irreligious.
caption: Piana degli Albanesi is one of the Arbëresh settlements in Sicily.
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