The name is made of water: Lungro comes from the Greek ugros, damp, and it is no accident that the old monastery of the casale was called Santa Maria delle Fonti; in the nineteen-thirties the hydrographic service counted some forty springs in its territory. The casale of Lungrum appears in 1193, when Ogerio and Basilia, lords of Brahalla, the old Altomonte, granted the whole of it to the Basilian monks, «with all the vassals» who were there. Around 1486 the Albanians arrived, fleeing the Ottomans after Skanderbeg's death, and were taken in here.
Lungro is the religious capital of the continental Italo-Albanians: here sits the Byzantine eparchy that gathers all the Arbëreshë communities of mainland Italy which kept the Eastern rite. And the village itself is built in Albanian: the houses close in a circle around small round squares, and each group is a gjitonia, a neighbourhood, a social unit with rules of its own, named after whatever stands inside it. Kastjeli is the castle, Bregu the high part, Konxa the icon, Kriqi the crucifix, Abati the abbey, Burgu the first medieval borough.
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📅 Every year, on 6 December
Lungro celebrates Saint Nicholas of Myra, known as Shën Kolli in the town's Arbëreshë tradition, on 6 December, in the cathedral dedicated to him.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
