Bisignano

Sister cities

• Feldkirchen
• Grottaferrata

History

Bisignano is identified with the ancient town of Besidiae, recorded by Livy, and was subsequently known as Besidianum and Bisidianum. The archaeological remains found there date the settlement back to the 15th or 14th century BC. In 1054 Bisignano was a free city. In 1641 it became a fief of the Sanseverino family, which it remained until 1806. In 1467, the daughter of the Albanian leader Skanderbeg, who was the wife of the Prince of Bisignano, invited many Albanian families to this region, and they established various colonies, where they spoke their own language and used the Greek Rite. Skanderbeg had previously helped King Ferdinand I of Naples to end a French-supported insurrection and had been rewarded with the grant of land in Apulia. An alternative version maintains that it was Skanderbeg's great-granddaughter Erina Castriota, Duchess of San Pietro di Galatina and wife of Pietro Antonio Sanseverino, Prince of Bisignano, who invited Albanians to settle in the area. This was one of the origins of Calabria's Italo-Albanian Arbëreshë community. Luca Antonio Pirozzo, better known as St. Humilis of Bisignano (1582–1637), was a Franciscan friar born in Bisignano.