Butrint’s magic

Butrint sits in a glorious lagoon

ROME – Dr Richard Hodges was warmly welcomed at a lecture he delivered on Butrint in his first American University of Rome appearance ahead of his inauguration as the university's President in July.

The Scientific Director of the Butrint Foundation who previously was director of the prestigious British School in Rome, Dr Hodges’ background in archaeology is not to be argued with, and his knowledge of the tiny man-made Albanian landscape of Butrint was impressive in his lecture this month entitled ‘Butrint: At the Crossroads of the Mediterranean’.

Dr Hodges took his audience rapidly through the history of Butrint, famously described by Virgil as a ‘miniature Troy’ in his epic poem the Aeneid. Its colourful journey has seen the city owned by Venice, and staunchly defended against the Ottoman Empire before being ceded to Napoleon and then conquered by the Ottoman Empire before Albania's independence.

The need to preserve the ancient city, with its many layers of history excavated from the site, was first recognised in 1992, where a meeting held in a café between interested parties, including the Albanian Minister of Culture, discussed the future of the city.

During that meeting, the group split into four groups to discuss what needed to be preserved most, Hodges remembered that the unanimous answer was its “magic.”

Butrint sits in a lagoon in South West Albania, and has at different times throughout the ages been perfectly placed along the trade routes of the Mediterranean, becoming famous as a fish stronghold. Dr Hodges highly recmomended the fish, saying it is "super magical."

 The layers of its long history have been peeled away by many different generations of diggers, including a large number of ruins excavated by the Italian archaeological mission sent by the Italian government from 1928 to 1936. The Theatre, believed to date back to around 300 B.C. was discovered by the mission, led byLuigi Maria Ugoilini. The Italian team also found the large Baptistery with its “fine mosaic” known, according to Dr Hodges, as the “seafood salad mosaic,” because it depicts everything you could want to eat from the surrounding lagoon.

Another major discovery and now a popular tourist attraction are the ruins of the ‘Triconch Palace’ which date back to approx. 400 A.D. Excavation of the Palace began in 1993 lead by the Butrint Foundation.

Several artefacts recovered from various ruins in the settlement are yet to be identified. A series of strangely shaped pots with several spouts are the source of much debate among archaeologists. According to Hodges, “the men think they’re bombs and the women think they’re shrimp pots.”

The Butrint National Park is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Dr Hodges says an “army of local workers” and international students have been trained in conservation practices. Tourists pour into the settlement in their thousands.

The main challenges, recounts Dr Hodges, have been working with the Albanian government and ensuring conservation through the onset of a sudden boom in tourist interest.  When the proect first began, Dr Hodges recalls that their Albanian colleagues were eager to set their “fees” of “five Mercedes Benzes and three apartments in Paris.”

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The Baptistery and mosaic