Bouthrōtón

Butrint stands on a hill above the Vivari Channel in southern Albania, close to the coast of Epirus and the Greek border. Settled occupation reached back to the tenth to eighth centuries BCE, when the site belonged to the Greek tribe of the Chaonians. Its position above water made the settlement a meeting point of hill, lagoon and sea. That setting supported a succession of political and religious communities and gave the Acropolis a view over approaches that mattered long after the ancient polis had passed.

Butrint later entered the state of Epirus and became a Roman colonia, then a Byzantine bishopric. Large early Christian buildings, including a sixth-century basilica and baptistery, show its rank within the church. The settlement declined, but the area continued to matter in later centuries. Venice acquired it in 1386, and its fisheries helped supply Corfu. By 1572 warfare had left the acropolis in ruins; administration moved to a smaller fortress near the fish weirs. Ottoman forces intermittently took the area before it passed to Ali Pasha in 1798.

Archaeological work has exposed a fourth-century Acropolis Basilica, the Triconch Palace and churches from the ninth century, evidence that religious life continued amid the settlement's gradual contraction.