Jan and Cora Gordon in Durazzo 1925

  In their book about their 1925 journey, Two Vagabonds in Albania, Jan and Cora Gordon were a little dismissive of what was then known as Durazzo, today Durrës. 

They wrote, 'Don’t stay in Durazzo. There's nothing to stop for in Durazzo unless you want to sketch the old walls that the Venetians made and which have been a bit tumbled about since by miscellaneous earthquakes.' They described how 'the mountaineers during the last revolution themselves expressed their opinion of their lowland compatriots. On marching into Durazzo one of their first actions was to go to the school and make an auto-da-fé of the lesson books. "If this is what education makes of the sons of the Eagle," they said, "down with Education."

Durrës is actually an interesting place to visit these days. The Venetian walls and tower are still there, but there is also now a Roman amphitheatre discovered by chance in 1966 and a variety of monuments reflecting the communist period and its end.  

The amphitheatre was built during Trajan's reign in the early 2nd century and is said to be the largest Roman amphitheatre in the Balkan Peninsula, with a capacity for 20,000 spectators. Roman Durrës was known as Dyrrachium (previously the Greek Epidamnus), a major Roman port and the western starting point of the Via Egnatia road that connected the Adriatic coast, via Elbasan, Qukës, Ohrid (North Macedonia) and Pella (Greece), to Constantinople. A new archaeological museum in town looks just about ready to open.


Here's part of the Venetian walls.


Here's the Venetian tower as it appears today.


and here in 1911.


The amphitheatre of Dyrrachium, discovered in 1966

A hero of WWII, Ulqinaku Mujo (1896-1939), a resistance fighter against the Italian fascist invasion of April 7, 1939. 

and a remnant of the communist period of the 1970s and 80s.












References

Jan and Cora Gordon in Albania December 25, 2014

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