Kodra Houses

It is not easy to find them, so hidden among the houses of the small village of Civita, province of Cosenza, Italy. But once you do, you can see them smiling or, sometimes, giving a sense of uneasiness or surprise. They are the seven so called “talking houses”, which stand out from the others for their morphology that reproduces human traits.

Civita has an Albanian soul, its culture is Arbereshe. It is no coincidence that its talking houses are recently renamed Kodra houses, as a tribute to Ibrahim Kodra, an internationally renowned artist from Albany, friend of Pablo Picasso, who visited the village in the nineties. The Kodra houses are examples of poor art, created by whimsical and imaginative craftsmen of the past who combined the desire to represent the architectural aspect of Civita and to support some popular beliefs.

Most of the talking houses are uninhabited, and to avoid that time or the hand of modernity change their appearance, they have been identified, together with the chimneys, as a historical-artistic asset to be protected.