Firmo

There is an arch in the middle of the village, and for centuries it divided two different villages. On one side stood Firmo Sottano, which the Arbëreshë call Ka Këllogjeri, from the monk: the Dominicans of Altomonte had bought the land from the king of Naples together with permission to build it, and populated it at once with Albanians. On the eleventh of January 1503, in the chapter hall of the convent of San Domenico, the prior granted a dozen of them the terms of their settlement before nine other religious; the census of that year records nine straw huts and the names of the men inside them, one by one. On the other side was Firmo Soprano, which was Sanseverino land: in 1502 the prince of Bisignano granted it to the condottiero Alessio Greco, come from Constantinople, so that he might build there a hamlet of Albanians or Greeks, and the price was three carlini, a hen, two eggs and one day's labour for every hearth. Alessio planned the settlement and then gave it up; the first houses were put up in 1548 by Cesare Greco, perhaps his grandson, making use of the papers his grandfather had signed. The two hamlets became a single comune only by a French law of 1807.

What came from the other shore of the Adriatic has stayed. Arbërisht is still spoken here, and it keeps words more archaic than the Albanian spoken in Albania today, because that language went on changing in contact with other cultures while this one was handed down mostly by mouth. The rite is Greek-Byzantine, and the village belongs to the eparchy of Lungro of the Italo-Albanians, established in 1919: the liturgical calendar does not coincide with the Roman one, and Holy Week is called Java e Madhe, Easter Pashkët. In May they hold the vallje, the dances in gala costume, a dress made of fourteen pieces which by now only the very old women wear. And the old Dominican convent, the one that gave the lower hamlet its name, is today the museum of Arbëreshë arts and traditions.