The Last Romans: The Balkan People Who Still Speak Rome's Language

The Last Romans: The Balkan People Who Still Speak Rome's Language

Rome fell in 476 AD. In the mountains of the Balkans, nobody told the Vlachs.

Across Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, and Romania, communities still speak Aromanian — a remarkable Eastern Balkan Romance language that developed from the spoken Latin of the Roman Balkans. For centuries, these Vlach communities survived among powerful empires, migrations, and changing borders, preserving a language with roots that reach back to the Roman Empire.

No Roman emperor protected them. No empire kept their communities together. Yet their language survived.

In this video, we explore the forgotten history of the Vlachs and Aromanians: how Rome transformed the Balkans through roads, cities, colonies, and military settlements; how Romance-speaking communities survived the great migrations and upheavals that reshaped southeastern Europe; and how Vlach communities became part of the history of the medieval Balkans.

We also explore the connection between the Vlachs and the medieval principalities that eventually became modern Romania, the lives of Aromanian communities under centuries of Ottoman rule, and the struggle to preserve Aromanian, one of Europe's most endangered Romance languages.