The Village of Mandritsa
Mandritsa sits in far southern Bulgaria, near the border with Greece and Turkey. According to local legend, it was founded in 1636 by Albanians from Vithkuq near Korçë, traditionally said to be Albanian dairymen who supplied the Ottoman army, which is reflected in the village’s name. For a long time it was a thriving settlement, and it is known today as Bulgaria’s only Albanian village, keeping the Albanian language alive far from the homeland.An Old Diaspora Community
Mandritsa belongs to the same broad phenomenon as other old Albanian settlements scattered across the Balkans and beyond: communities that moved during the Ottoman centuries and preserved their speech and identity in isolation. It sits alongside the Arbëreshë of Italy, the Arvanites of Greece, and the Albanian villages of Ukraine as part of the older diaspora described in Albanians around the world.Language and Traditions
For much of its history, Mandritsa’s residents spoke Albanian and maintained distinct customs, architecture and food. The village preserved an old form of the Albanian language, and its traditional adobe houses, built with a spacious upper floor for raising silkworms, and its two churches reflected a prosperous past. As with other isolated diaspora communities, the language gradually gave way to the surrounding majority language among younger generations, but the village’s Albanian origin remained central to its identity.Decline and Heritage
Like many rural Balkan villages, Mandritsa saw significant population decline over the 20th century as people moved to cities and abroad. Today it is a very small village, with 34 residents at the 2021 census, down from 52 in 2011, but its Albanian heritage, historic houses and setting have made it a site of cultural and tourist interest. It stands as a preserved reminder of the Albanian presence in Bulgaria rather than a large living community.Albanians in Bulgaria More Broadly
Beyond Mandritsa, the Albanian presence in Bulgaria has historically been modest and dispersed. Bulgaria also lay on the migration routes of Balkan peoples, including the ancestors of the Albanian communities that continued north into what is now Ukraine. The country is therefore part of the wider map of Albanian movement through the eastern Balkans over the centuries.Related Communities
For other old diaspora settlements, see the Arbëreshë of Italy and Albanians in Greece. For neighboring Balkan communities, see Albanians in Serbia, and for the origins of the people, where Albanian people come from.Mandritsa in Numbers and Legend
Mandritsa lies on the right bank of the Byala Reka river, 19 kilometers south of the town of Ivaylovgrad, right on the Bulgarian-Greek border. According to local legend, as reported by the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), it was founded in 1636 by three Orthodox Christian brothers from the village of Vithkuq, near Korçë in southeastern Albania. The brothers were dairymen, and the name comes from the word mandra, a dairy. The legend adds that an Ottoman bey told them to settle wherever nightfall caught them.
The village’s decline can be put in figures. Citing Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute, BTA reports that Mandritsa had 52 residents at the 2011 census and 34 at the 2021 census. It was once far larger: silk was the village’s main livelihood, its adobe houses were built with a roomy upper floor for raising silkworms, and BTA lists mills, blacksmiths, workshops, a cinema and a bell foundry among the things it used to have.
Part of the population left for Greece in the early twentieth century. Settlers from Mandritsa founded the village of Mandres near Kilkis, in northern Greece, and named it after their birthplace. Families also spread across Aegean Macedonia and Western Thrace, so part of Mandritsa’s story continues on the Greek side of the border.
| Mandritsa fact | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Right bank of the Byala Reka, 19 km south of Ivaylovgrad, on the Greek border | Tirana Times |
| Founding, by local legend | 1636, by three brothers from Vithkuq near Korçë | BTA |
| Residents, 2011 census | 52 | National Statistical Institute, cited by BTA |
| Residents, 2021 census | 34 | National Statistical Institute, cited by BTA |
| Churches | St Nedelya, the older church by the cemetery, and St Dimitar in the village center | BTA |
| Historic livelihood | Silk production | BTA |
| Daughter settlement | Mandres, near Kilkis, Greece | BTA |
Who Has Recorded the Mandritsa Dialect
The speech of Mandritsa was never a written language, so what survives on paper is the work of a few researchers. The Bulgarian Albanologist Ludmil Stankov devoted a monograph to the variety spoken in the village. The Tirana Times reported that the book runs to 230 pages, was published by the University of Sofia, and was welcomed by the Albanian Academy of Sciences as a contribution to academic ties between the two countries.
A second work came from inside the community. In 2015 Maria Georgieva-Peeva published a 120-page Bulgarian-Albanian conversational dictionary of the village’s speech. A review in the proceedings of the International Seminar on Albanian Language, Literature and Culture describes its six sections, from a settlement history and grammar sketch to themed vocabulary for everyday talk, trade, food and travel. Each entry is given four ways: in Bulgarian, in Bulgarian phonetic spelling, in Albanian script, and in standard Albanian. The reviewer notes Bulgarian, Turkish and Greek influences that have not changed the core of the dialect.
The clearest test is a practical one. Residents told BTA in 2026 that on a recent visit to Vithkuq, the village their ancestors are said to have left almost four centuries ago, they could understand about 80 percent of what local people said.
Sofia and the Dëshira Society
The second Albanian story in Bulgaria is urban and much later. After Bulgaria’s liberation from Ottoman rule in 1878, migrant workers from Albania, many of them from the south, came to the new country as masons, sawmill hands, guards and small traders. The Bulgarian historian Bobi Bobev and his co-author Toma Kacori estimate that by the end of the nineteenth century more than five hundred families of Albanian origin lived in Sofia.
On 1 January 1893 these workers founded a patriotic society called Dëshira, meaning “longing” or “desire.” Bobev and Kacori describe the first meeting in an inn on Serdika Street kept by Dimitër Mole, who had been reading Albanian books and newspapers aloud to customers who could not read. Fifty-three members signed up that day. A master mason, Ligor Prifti Borova, was elected chairman and Mole became secretary. The society’s first aim was schooling: its teacher, Kosta Jani Trebicka, went from house to house teaching children by day and taught the workers at the inn by night.
The Mbrothësia Press and Its Titles
Dëshira’s most lasting project was a printing house named Mbrothësia (“Progress”), run by Kristo Luarasi. Bobev and Kacori argue that Sofia mattered because, unlike Istanbul and Bucharest, it had direct connections to the Albanian lands, and that the press turned the city into a magnet for the national movement, in the same years that the Frashëri brothers were writing its key texts.
| Title printed in Sofia | What it was | Who was behind it |
|---|---|---|
| Kalendari Kombiar (National Calendar) | Annual almanac, successor to the press’s first calendar | Midhat Frashëri, under the pen name Lumo Skendo |
| Drita (The Light) | Newspaper, launched in 1901 | Shahin Kolonja, editor |
| Liri e Shqipërisë (Free Albania) | Newspaper | Kristo Luarasi |
| Waves of the Sea (Valët e Detit) | Collection of folk songs, tales and proverbs | Spiro Dine |
| Albania: What It Was, What It Is and What It Will Be | Political treatise, also printed in Sofia in Turkish and Greek | Sami Frashëri |
One of those newspapers has a place in every Albanian’s memory. The poem that became the Albanian national anthem, written by the Bucharest-based poet Asdreni, was first printed in Liri e Shqipërisë in Sofia on 21 April 1912.
Sofia also drew visitors. Bobev and Kacori record that Bajo Topulli, who chaired a secret committee for Albania’s liberation, and his brother Çerçiz, a guerrilla commander, spent more than six months in the city in 1906, and that in November 1911 Fan Noli celebrated a liturgy in Albanian at the Sveti Spas church. After the First World War the leading members of Dëshira, including Midhat Frashëri, Mole and Luarasi, returned to Albania, and the press moved to Tirana. In 1928 the society split over the proclamation of King Zog, and a second society named after Gjergj Kastrioti was formed. Both ceased activity after 1945. By 1998, the authors wrote, about a hundred families of Albanian origin remained in Sofia.
What Bulgaria’s Census Does and Does Not Show
Bulgaria’s headline census releases do not give a separate count of Albanians. The National Statistical Institute’s release on the census of 7 September 2021 reports 5,118,494 people in the Bulgarian ethnic group (84.6 percent of those who answered), 508,378 in the Turkish group, 266,720 in the Roma group, and 79,006 people, or 1.3 percent, in all other ethnic groups combined. Albanians are inside that last figure and are not listed separately. The institute’s summary table for the 2011 census likewise names groups such as Armenians, Russians, Vlachs and Greeks, but not Albanians.
For that reason this guide does not give a national number. The figures that can be verified are local ones, such as Mandritsa’s 34 residents in 2021.
The Road From Bulgaria to Ukraine
The main article mentions that the ancestors of Ukraine’s Albanians passed through Bulgaria. Research by Aleksandra Dugushina of the Russian Academy of Sciences fills in the route. A wave of Orthodox Albanians left the districts of Devoll, Vithkuq, Korçë and Kolonjë around the end of the fifteenth century and settled in eastern Bulgaria, mainly in what is now the Varna region. From there, in 1809 and 1810, their descendants moved on to the Russian Empire together with Bulgarian and Gagauz neighbors. Vithkuq, in other words, appears in the origin stories of both Mandritsa and the Albanian villages of Ukraine.
Timeline: Albanians in Bulgaria
- Around 1500: Orthodox Albanians from the Korçë region settle in eastern Bulgaria, mainly around Varna.
- 1636: Traditional founding date of Mandritsa, according to local legend.
- 1809 to 1810: Albanians from eastern Bulgaria move to the Russian Empire, to what is now southern Ukraine.
- 1878: Bulgaria’s liberation; Albanian migrant workers begin to gather in Sofia.
- 1 January 1893: The Dëshira society is founded in Sofia with 53 members.
- 1901: Shahin Kolonja’s newspaper Drita begins publication in Sofia.
- 1906: Bajo and Çerçiz Topulli spend more than six months in Sofia.
- November 1911: Fan Noli celebrates a liturgy in Albanian in Sofia.
- 21 April 1912: The future national anthem is first printed in Liri e Shqipërisë.
- Early twentieth century: Families from Mandritsa found Mandres near Kilkis, Greece.
- 1928: Dëshira splits; the Gjergj Kastrioti society is formed.
- 1945: Both Sofia societies cease activity.
- 2015: A Bulgarian-Albanian dictionary of the Mandritsa dialect is published.
- 2021: The census records 34 residents in Mandritsa.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are there Albanians in Bulgaria?
Yes, historically. The clearest trace is Mandritsa, a village in southern Bulgaria founded by Albanians that long preserved the Albanian language and customs.What is Mandritsa?
Mandritsa is a village in far southern Bulgaria, traditionally founded by Albanians in 1636, in the Ottoman era, and known as the only Albanian village in the country.Do people in Mandritsa still speak Albanian?
The village preserved Albanian for generations, but as with other isolated diaspora communities the language has declined among younger residents.Why did Albanians settle in Bulgaria?
Albanian movement through the eastern Balkans during the Ottoman period led to settlements like Mandritsa, part of the broader old Albanian diaspora.Learn More
Continue with Albanians around the world, the Arbëreshë of Italy, and where Albanian people come from.Sources
- Mandritsa (Wikipedia)
- Albanians in Bulgaria (Wikipedia)
- Bulgarian News Agency (BTA): Mandritsa, Bulgaria’s Only Albanian Village, Keeps 390-Year-Old Heritage Alive
- National Statistical Institute (Bulgaria): Ethno-cultural characteristics of the population as of September 7, 2021
- National Statistical Institute (Bulgaria): 2011 Census, population by ethnic group and mother tongue
- Bobi Bobev and Toma Kacori: The Albanians in Bulgaria, excerpt from “Albania” (1998), in Bulgarian
- CEEOL: The Albanian dialect of Mandrica village according to the dictionary of Marija Georgieva-Peeva (2017)
- Tirana Times: Monograph features preserved spoken Albanian in Bulgarian village
- Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe: Aleksandra Dugushina, The Albanian Diaspora in Budzhak and Priazovye (2024)
- Wikipedia: Himni i Flamurit (first publication of the anthem, citing Vasil Tole)
Author: Val Demiri
Valbona is an editor and writer at ALB Connection, where she covers the people, businesses, and culture shaping the Albanian diaspora. A journalism graduate of the University of Iowa, her work spans community profiles, success stories, and features on Albanian life across the US, Europe, and beyond. She is drawn to stories that celebrate Albanian achievement and keep the community connected across borders.
