Museum of Arbëreshe Culture

The Museum, established in 1984, preserves, protects and enhances the culture of an ethnic-linguistic minority of Albanian origin that settled in San Paolo Albanese (Shën Palji) in the Pollino National Park in the 16th century. The Museum is a historical testimony and, at the same time, a cultural laboratory of an Arbëreshe community, which keeps up-to-date traditions, customs, language, Greek-Byzantine religious rite, popular festivals, material remains, natural and human environments, memory, roots, identity. Micro-environments of agro-pastoral material culture are set up inside the museum; tools, materials, methods and products of broom processing and its transformation into fabric are on display. The museum is integrated into a rural landscape and a historic centre of exceptional natural and cultural value.