Apollonia

Founded by Greek colonists around 600 BCE and later a significant Roman city where the young Octavian was studying when Caesar was assassinated, Apollonia sits on a low hill above the Vjosa plain surrounded by olive groves. Its most photographed structure is the restored facade of the bouleuterion, the council building, with six tall columns standing against the sky. Around it lie a theatre, a library, city walls and stretches of paved street, and a thirteenth-century Byzantine monastery on the site houses a small museum and a church with fine frescoes. It sees a fraction of the visitors that comparable sites in Greece or Italy do.

History

People of the Early Bronze Age buried their dead in mounds here, the earliest from around 2700 BC, but the area was little used until Greek colonists from Corinth, and possibly Corcyra, founded a trading settlement around 600 BC on a largely abandoned coastal site, invited by the local Illyrians, at the crossroads of a route between the Adriatic coast and the interior that later became the Roman Via Egnatia. The city seems to have declined with the rise of Vlorë; European classicists rediscovered it in the 18th century, Austrian archaeologists first dug here during the occupation of 1916-1918 and a French team in 1924-1938, and Albanian teams have worked since 1948, though much remains unexcavated. In 1967 heavy machinery and some 400 concrete military bunkers did serious and lasting damage, the museum in the monastery was plundered in the unrest after 1990, and a new museum opened in December 2011 (Wikipedia, Apollonia - Illyria).

The main sights

• The bouleuterion facade - the restored columned front of the council house.
• The odeon and theatre - performance spaces in the ruins.
• The monastery of St Mary - Byzantine church, frescoes and site museum.
• The olive-grove setting - the hill and plain views around the ruins.

When to go

Spring and autumn give comfortable walking and green surroundings; spring adds wildflowers among the stones. Summer is hot and shadeless on the hill. The site is open year round with reduced winter hours.

Things to know

Much of the city remains unexcavated, so visitors expecting Ephesus-scale ruins will find something quieter and more fragmentary - the pleasure here is atmosphere and emptiness. Signage is limited and a guide adds a great deal. Getting there without a car is awkward; taxis from Fier are the usual solution. Combine with Berat, roughly an hour away.

Nearby

Berat's Ottoman old town, the Vjosa river and the coast at Vlore.

Key facts