Butrint, ancient Buthrotum, lies in
south-west Albania, 20 km south of the modern port of Saranda. Its location is
spectacular: the ancient city
occupies a bluff of land protruding into the Vivari channel, a stretch of water
which today connects the Straits of Corfu, 4 km west of Butrint, to the inland
salt-water Lake Butrint.
South of the channel lies a flat reclaimed plain, today
drained by dykes, which effectively separates Butrint from the range of
mountains that run along Albania's southern frontier with Greece.
The history of
Butrint Butrint was probably settled in the 8th century B.C. by Corfiot traders;
this was almost certainly the town associated with the legend of Aeneas. By the
4th century, Butrint was a Chaoanian port, probably at the centre of one of the
Hellenic tribes of Epirus.
The Romans used the port as a supply base for
military campaigns in the Balkans in the 2nd century. The following century it
became a colony for the veterans under Julius Caesar.
By later roman times, it
had its own bishop, and was evidently a place that was once again expanding. It
then suffered attack by the Goths in 551. Its subsequent history until the tenth
century, as in the case of many Mediterranean ports, remains a mystery.
Thereafter, it emerged a major port-of-call on the Adriatic route from Venice to
Byzantium. For much of the later Middle Ages it was in Venetian hands, defending
the eastern flank of the Straits of Corfu. Only in the eighteenth century did
they abandon Butrint in the face of the Turks.
[At the basilica
]
[Entrance of Basilica
]
By the 1850's, though, when
Edward Lear passed this way, it was deserted.Butrint remained overlooked until
the 1920's, when an Italian mission led by Luigi Ugolini was despatched to
Albania.
In 1924 Ugolini chose the Illyrian hilltop site, the Phoinike, 20 miles
north of Butrint, for his first campaigns. This proved to be less promising than
Ugolini imagined, so in 1928, in the hope of discovering the archaeology of the
age of Aeneas, which might then be directly linked for propaganda purposes to
Rome, he began work at Butrint.
At that time Butrint was a largely bare hill in
a deserted landscape. Within three months Ugolini had unearthed great stretches
of the Greek polygonal walling around the acropolis including several fine
gates.
His largest excavations, however, were on the south-facing flank of the
hilltop where he discovered the theatre. The 4th century theatre, with its well
preserved seating and cavea, produced a sensation when a line of statues
including the "goddess of Butrint" and a fine head of Apollo were discovered.
Working on a huge scale, Ugolini unearthed the Temple of Asclepulus beside the
theatre, a fine Roman bathblock in front of it, parts of an Early Byzantine
palace by the Vivari canal, an extraordinarily well-preserved Early Byzantine
baptistry with a perfectly preserved later fifth-century mosaic pavement and
many other monuments.
[Various Buildings
]
[The Castle by the hill
]
Mugolini worked with a fervour until his early death in
1936 from malaria. The new campaign the new excavations supported by the
Albanian Institute of Archaeology and the Butrint Foundation aims to develop
Butrint from two points of view.
First, as most of the previous archaeological
investigations has been concentrated upon the ancient levels, Byzantine Butrint
remains largely unknown. The main objective of the new campaign is to chart the
topographical historyof this period.
In particular, it is important to
establish the 6th to 10th century A.D. phases: to examine how this important
port fared as the Mediterranean commercial systems collapsed.
The second aim of the new campaign of research at Butrint is to promote this remarkable site (and
its context) in such a way that it attracts a steady flow of tourists which in
turn provide a source of income for the region.
Through careful heritage
management, the Butrint Foundation also aims to help protect this site and its
region. Excavations and surveys in 1994-95 have been limited in their scope.
A
phase of assessment has taken place in order to develop the project
successfully. These new surveys indicate that throughout its history the port of
Butrint was dominated by its environmental circumstances.
[The Theater
]
It seems likely that
in later Bronze Age and early Greek times, when the hilltop (the acropolis) was
the centre of the ettlement, Butrint was a seabord town.
The sea would appear to
have extended far inland beyond the northern extent of the present Lake Butrint.
At that time it is likely that Butrint's commercial port lay in the sheltered
bay on the north side of the hill.
Coming by land, visitors would have
approached Butrint down the narrow coastal peninsula. But by Roman times much of
the low-lying ground which now separates Butrint from the Straits of Corfu had
been reclaimed.
