The 22rows of seats would have accompanied about 2000 people. The audience reached the seats by means
of six radiating flights of steps.
The steep incline forced the builders to support the sides of
the seating with transverse walls, supported by two lateral walls, giving the theatre a quadrangular form unusual at the time.
Entry to the building was made by a corridor on each side. At the beginning of the 2C the orchestra
pit and the stagewere reconstructed. A number of statues were found in Butrint during excavations.
Some of statues that were found are , two animal statues, a head of Agrippa,
Augustus´s general, and most important of all, the finest Classical statue
found in Albania, the so-called ´Goddes of Butrint´, now exhibited in Tirana in the National
Historical Museum.
They stood in six marble niches. Above the theatre was a 2C BC temple which was built
simultaneously with the theatre and integrated into its foundations. Inside there is a foundation where the altar stood, and a stylobate in the east corner.
In the 1C BC the floor was covered with a black and white mosaic made in geometrical patterns.
[Castle of Butrint
]
[Sunset over Butrint
]
South of the theatre are the remains of baths, dating from the 2C BC, four rooms, heated by
under-floor conduits, and associated buildings.
On the opposite side of the theatre to the stoa,
below it, are the remains of the Temple of Asklepios. This temple was constructed in the 3C BC, and rebuilt
in the 2C.
Many small marble statues and votive offerings were found here, and are now exhibited
in the museum. It is thought to have been fed from water flowing from a cave behind the theatre which
was belived to have curative properties.
Inscriptions found indicate that Asklepios was thought to be the protective god of the city.
The temple was covered with an arched roof.
The walls of both the naos, the sacred area, and the vestibule
were covered with plaster and painted with frescoes. The front entrance was flanked by two windows
. It was reconstructed using similar building techniques to the theatre.
The finest building
on the site is the Early Christian Baptistry, one of the most important and best preserved paleo-Christian
monuments in the whole Adriatic region.
This is reached by another path through the trees and undergrowth, not very easy to find
, east from the theatre, across the 3C walls. Nearby are the remains of a very large late Roman bathing
establishment, the size of which illustrates the prosperity and importance of Butrint in that period.
A votive inscription dedicated to Zeus Cassios, the god protecting mariners, has been found inside it,
indicating the importance of Butrint as an ancient port.
The baptistry floor has very fine mosaics showing wild animals,
which have been recently cleaned and restored. Their style resembles others found in Epirus, at Nikopolis in particular, and
would suggest a construction date in the first half of the 6C.
In the centre of the mosaic is the tree of the Eucharist, a vase with a bunch
of grapes, two small birds and two peacoks above them. Sixteen smooth granite
columns support wat would probably have been a wooden roof.
Some archaeologist consider the baptistry is
built on the site and used the structure of an earlier Roman bath building, within a town house,
judging by the way the circular baptistry is laid out within square external walls,
and from other archaeological evidence.
It consists of a chamber on the north side
and the main baptistry at the centre of which is the baptismal font from which
eight lines radiate.
The whole chamber is made up of three concentric circles. The visitor cannot
fail to be impressed by the beauty and tranquility of the place, where the natural
surroundings so complement the beauty of the remains.
Return back towards
the entrance gate through the woods. On the right is the gymnasium,
which was built in the 1C and 2C.
The main area, above the surviving row of steps, was
both a place of physical and intellectual education in the city. A rectangular courtyard is surrounded
by a series of rooms with mosaic floors.
It is divided into two parts by a central basin in the form of nympheum. The floor of the northern part is paved with rectangular slabs.
Inside the nympheum are three circular niches faced with marble and mosaic.
The floor of the basin is faced with marble in different
colours in geometrical patterns. The north side was mainly used for gymnastic exercises, while the southern part was a rest and study area.
The south-east rooms were parts of a bath house.
Some 500m from the park are the remains of a medieval tower. On the opposite side
of the canal, on the promontory above the sea, is a small fortress built by Ali Pasha in 1807, to protect the shipping from the French fleet.
In Roman times there was probably a small bridge hereabouts.
