Gli archivi ecclesiali e la memoria storico-culturale degli Arbëreshë. Un bilancio di tre decenni di ricerche

The history of Albanian emigration to Italy constitutes a special chapter of Italian albanological research. The essay proposes to define a chronological grid of a large and complex migratory phenomenon and to go back to the typology of Albanian settlements in southern Italy. The primary sources (archives of the southern regions and the parish registers) concur with the linguistic data (onomaiological and toponymic) to reconstruct the complex network that connects the Italian and Balkan Albanian-speaking realities.