The Arbëreshë, also known as Albanians of Italy, are an Albanian ethnolinguistic group in Southern Italy, mostly concentrated in scattered villages in the region of Calabria and, to a lesser extent, in the regions of Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, Molise and Sicily. They are the descendants of Albanian refugees who fled Albania, and later some from Morea between the 14th and the 18th centuries following the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. Nowadays, most of the fifty Arbëreshë communities are adherents to the Italo-Albanian Church, an Eastern Catholic Church. The Arbëreshë speak Arbëresh, a Tosk Albanian variety involving code-mixing with regional Romance languages of Italy. It is of particular interest to students of the modern Albanian language as it retains speech sounds, morphosyntactic and vocabulary elements of the language spoken in pre-Ottoman Albania. In Italy, the Albanian language (and not specifically Arbëresh) is protected by law number 482/99, concerning the protection of the historic linguistic minorities. It is estimated that there are about 100,000 Italo-Albanians (400,000 if including those outside of Italy); they constitute one of the oldest and largest minorities in Italy. Being Italian and Arbëreshë are both central to Italo-Albanians' identity. Among the Arbëreshë the memory of Skanderbeg and his exploits was maintained and survived through songs The Arbëreshë cuisine is a mix of Albanian cuisine with Sicilian, Calabrian, and Lucanian influences. Traditional dishes include: Strangujët, Kanojët and Bukë 📸 Arbëreshë people in their traditional clothes