With its beautiful coastal setting, Butrint is undoubtedly the most outstanding of Albania's ancient sites. 18 km from Saranda, it dates back a lot later than the town, probably to the 6th century BC when the Greeks from Corfu came to live here.
Within a century Butrint had become a fortified trading city with an acropolis. The lower part began to develop in the 3rd century BC, and many large stone buildings had already been built by the time the Romans arrived in 167 BC.
Butrint prospered under the Romans until the 5th century AD when the Byzantines took it over, building many churches and making it into an ecclesiastical centre.
It was then briefly occupied by the Venetians in the 14th century before being abandoned in the late Middle Ages when the area became partially submerged by the sea. The city then went into a long decline and was abandoned until 1927, when Italian archaeologists arrived. Today the magical ruins of the site show each period of the city’s development.
©divento.com
©divento.com
©divento.com
©divento.com
https://kryeministria.al/en/newsroom/parqet/
By Geoff Wong - Flickr: Butrint amphitheatre, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19063091
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