Butrint, exploring an ancient city in Albania
History is a lie that no one disputes. Napoleon Bonaparte
Today I want to take you with me and explore the hidden treasure near the Mediterranean Sea, namely Butrint, the ruins of the ancient city surrounded by the largest National Park in Albania.
The city from what I saw is not so well known for tourists and I learned about it from travel vlogs.
This is also the last destination that we have proposed to visit from the summer holiday of 2022 that we spent in Albania.
We had accommodation in Vlore and another advantage was that we were there with my car and we could move anywhere we wanted, if it is to use public transport I don't know what to tell you because I didn't see too many except in big cities, I recommend you to come here by personal car, rented car or taxi.
The cheapest way is the personal car, the other options being quite expensive, depending on your budget, if you want to better understand the whole history of Butrint you can pay a guide that you can easily find in the big resorts (Vlore, Ksamil, Sarande).
Here you can get here very easily with the help of the gps that will bring you to the parking lot of the National Park, so we did and we arrived in the parking lot of the park, it is good to know that parking is free.
From the parking lot I noticed that there is a floating bridge that takes you across to the other side where I saw Venetian Triangle Castle(I didn't have time to cross to the other side to see what it was, but it looked interesting).
We left the car safely, the parking lot is guarded, and we headed to the entrance here in order to enter the ancient city of Butrint we had to pay the entrance fee which was 1000LEK/9euro/person.
As soon as we passed the entrance gate the place is amazing it captivated me, we sat a few moments on the edge of the lake and took a few pictures after which we continued our walk, by the way if you decide to come here book a day for Butrint it is worth to explore every piece of land because it is full of history.
Also at the entrance you are given a free map of the entire ancient city where each area is detailed plus you can find maps in several international languages.
As I said above if you visit this place with a guide you will understand much better every corner of it, we chose to visit it without a guide and it was not difficult, it is a pleasure to walk on cobbled paths and laurel forest, do not worry there are many information boards that will help you a lot, all the existing monuments here are numbered from 1-25.
I will share with you as many pictures as I can from here because it's a pity not to see the place where history was written but I will focus especially on the places that really left me speechless, don't get me wrong that only a few points here would be interesting, no, the whole national park is spectacular, it's just that some areas I liked more, you may like other areas different from mine.
The first monument is the Temple of Asclepius, the place where people used to come with offerings to this god to heal them from different diseases, today a large part of the place is flooded and access is made on a wooden bridge.
I found the amphitheatre that appears on the 2000leke note, hehe.
Another emblematic place here is the amphitheatre, it is not very big, it is made in the shape of a semicircle of stone blocks, at the bottom the floor is flooded, this is the reason why the floor was made of wood.
We go further and reach the Roman Forum, The Baptisery and its mosaic pavements, at the bottom of the city we pass right by that special lake.
We leave behind these areas and reach the amazing Great Basilica made of thick stone walls with large vaults perfectly walled, what technology they used in those times to achieve such works.
We continue our way to the Lake Gate and the Lion Gate, I can't realize how tall these people were, at least through the Lion Gate you have to bend down to pass.
After passing the Lion's Gate we reached the Acropolis area where a beautiful castle was built, from here we had a view over the whole area and the lake.
My dear friends this was the last stop in Albania in 2022, I hope you enjoyed the walk through the history of this ancient city.
If you liked what you saw and read here please don't forget to give a LiKe, Follow, reBlog or a Comment, for all this I thank you, and until the next post I say goodbye.
P.S. The attached pictures you have just seen are taken by me with my mobile phone in Butrint, Albania, and the text is also designed by me.
