Santa Cristina Gela

Santa Cristina Gela sits at 692 metres in the hills southwest of Palermo, fifteen kilometres from the city and four from Piana degli Albanesi. It is the smallest and the newest of the three Arbëreshë communities in Sicily, the others being Piana and Contessa Entellina. On 31 May 1691 the local fiefdom was granted in emphyteusis to eighty-two Arbëreshë colonists from Piana, descendants of the Albanian families who had crossed to Sicily in the fifteenth century to escape the Ottoman advance. Their descendants still translanguage between Arbërisht, Sicilian and Italian. Ecclesiastically the village belongs to the Byzantine-rite Eparchy of Piana degli Albanesi, though the main church here uses the Latin rite to accommodate residents of non-Albanian origin. The town is the seat of the Union of Albanian Municipalities of Sicily, the BESA. The patronal feast of Santa Cristina Megalomartire of Bolsena, on 24 July, brings the silver urn from Palermo cathedral up the hill in procession.