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Grottaminarda, Italy

Campania Region

Province of Avellino

Is located in the center of the valley of the Ufita River, 56 miles from Naples, 22 miles from Avellino and 16 miles from Benevento. Population is 8,329. I am presently working on adding further information regarding Grottaminarda in a page update later this year.

February 4, 2000

From the book “Storia di Grottaminarda, Il paese di San Tommaso” by Antonio Palomba

&

Elio Romano. Pages 95-96

Antonio Palomba. E-mail: palposta@tin.it

Traslation by Roberto Priore. E-mail: robertopriore@virgilio.it

Gaspare d'Aquino left with his horses, cross-bow men and infantry in the beginning of August 1480 to combat against the Turkish unshipped in Puglia and fotunately he did not left his skin there, because the war ended soon on the first months of the next year because of the death of their leader, Maometto II. Turkish, this way, remaining without leader and frightened about the epidemic, prefered the sea and went back to Albany. But from here, from Albany naturally, numerous were the Albanian families that fled away, to Italy and to Puglia to elude the Turkish domination. They gathered in empty feuds or in destroyed villages. They also used to receive privileges that consacrated the birth of new councils, often endowed with comunal goods, or they were called on purpose by barons to repeople their lands and for doing agriculture works, like in Ariano, or for artisan works, like in Grottaminarda. In fact, the same Gaspare d'Aquino had called them to country in 1483 and had promissed them the exemption from the family tax, if they settleed in the country. And the Albanian, attracted by the promisses from Gaspare d'Aquino, encamped in village, justly at the Borgo, in a zone, that just then for the presence of the Albanian caught the name of Piana degli Albanesi, developing mostly hand and artisan works, linked to trade and to the passage of animals in roaming. They settled in such a permanent way, that some of these families have arrived even to our days, still present in the village and keeping the old surname Albanese, with which by the end of the 15th century they were used to be generally called and identified.