Butrint

Butrint sits on a hill above the Vivari Channel, close to the Straits of Corfu, and in one walk you pass through some 2,500 years of Mediterranean history: a Greek theatre, Roman baths, a Byzantine baptistery, a Venetian fortress and the castle of Ali Pasha. It is the most important archaeological site in Albania, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992 and the heart of a national park created in 2000.

The Chaonians, a Greek people of Epirus, made it one of their ports. Roman writers told a grander story: Virgil made the Trojan seer Helenus its founder and had Aeneas stop here on his wanderings, a legend the city happily adopted. By the 4th century BC it had a theatre, an agora and a sanctuary of Asclepius, all within a wall whose entrances include the Lion Gate and the so-called Scaean Gate. The theatre's stones are covered with inscriptions, many recording the freeing of slaves. Julius Caesar declared it a colony in 44 BC, and after the battle of Actium Augustus settled veterans here, doubling the town with an aqueduct, baths, a forum and a nymphaeum.

In late antiquity Butrint became a bishopric, and its 6th-century baptistery, with its large and complex floor mosaic, is one of the largest early Christian buildings of its type; the Great Basilica also dates from that century. Byzantines, Angevins and Venetians fought over the place through the Middle Ages, until by 1572 the acropolis was abandoned and the town reduced to a small triangular fortress guarding fish weirs. Ali Pasha of Tepelena took it in 1798. Modern excavation began in 1928 under the Italian archaeologist Luigi Maria Ugolini, sent by Mussolini's government for political rather than scholarly reasons. Nikita Khrushchev visited in 1959 and is said to have suggested turning the area into a submarine base; the road from Sarandë was built for his visit.

Today the setting is half the pleasure, with water on several sides, and in wet periods parts of the theatre and forum can flood. Allow two to three hours for the circuit and the castle museum.

Getting there

Butrint is about 14 km south of Sarandë by road, near the Greek border. Local buses leave from the port area of Sarandë and take about 30 minutes, passing through Ksamil, about 10 minutes from the site; timetables change with the season. The nearest airport is Corfu (CFU), about 20 km away across the straits: from Corfu, hydrofoils (about 30 minutes) and ferries (about 90 minutes) run daily to Sarandë. Within Albania, Tirana International Airport (TIA) is about 186 km away in a straight line and considerably farther by road.