The village is called Greci, the Greeks, because Greeks founded it: in 535 the emperor Justinian sent the general Belisarius to Italy, and he planted a Byzantine colony here. Destroyed by the Saracens in 908 and rebuilt in 1039 on the orders of the prince of Benevento, the place emptied again in the centuries that followed. It was Albanians who repopulated it: they arrived in the second half of the fifteenth century in the train of George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, who had landed to help the king of Naples and had won the battle of 1462 for him. The king let them stay, partly so that they would keep an eye on the Franco-Provençal settlements of nearby Valmaggiore, which sided with the Angevins.
The Byzantine rite did not survive here: it was abolished by the authorities of the neighbouring towns, at times by force, and among those who set their hand to it was the cardinal of Benevento Pietro Francesco Orsini, later Pope Benedict XIII. The language did survive: at Greci people still speak Arbëresh — the village calls itself Katundi, which simply means the village — and it is the only linguistic minority in Campania, protected by law. In the Breggo quarter, whose name is Arbëresh for hill, the kalive still stand, the dry-stone huts built by the two waves of migrants.
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📅 Every year, on 25 August
On 25 August Greci, a municipality of 736 inhabitants in the province of Avellino, celebrates its patron San Bartolomeo the apostle with the Sacred Drama performed by the villagers.
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.
Outside Greci, but an easy day trip away.
