Pse të vizitoni Apoloninë

Pretty much every guidebook in print will tell you Apollonia was “founded by Greek colonists from Corinth in 588 BC.”

Technically correct. Historically gutting.

Here’s what they don’t tell you: the colonists were 200 guys. Two hundred. Thats it.

Stephanus of Byzantium gives the number plainly. They didn’t conquer this place. They couldn’t have — the Taulantii Illyrians who lived here outnumbered them by orders of magnitude, and modern bioarchaeology confirms it. In 2014, a team led by Britney McIlvaine and Lynne Schepartz analyzed dental and cranial traits from 116 skeletons buried at colonial-era Apollonia and compared them to Corinthian skeletons from the supposed mother-city and Illyrian skeletons from Lofkënd inland. Roughly 90% of Apollonia’s population grouped genetically with Illyrians, not Greeks.

Aristotle figured this out in the 4th century BC without any DNA. In Politika (1290b), he uses Apollonia as his textbook case of an oligarchy where “the few” — descendants of the original Greek settlers — held all the power over a free majority population that wasn’t Greek. The Greek-descended elite even practiced xenelasia, the Spartan trick of expelling foreigners, to keep their bloodline closed. Three centuries of endogamy. They knew what they were doing.

Read the inscriptions and the same story keeps showing up. The French school led by Pierre Cabanes spent decades cataloging the names that appear on Apollonia’s gravestones and in its public inscriptions, and they’re full of unmistakably Illyrian names — Plator, Epicadus, Tritos, Teutaia, Monounios, Dazos. The famous tombstone of “Tritos, son of Plator” sits in the museum today. Greek script, Illyrian people. Funerary stelai show women in Illyrian dress.

So when you walk through the gate and read the panel that says “Greek colony founded 588 BC,” translate it in your head to: Illyrian place that absorbed and outlasted a small Greek elite, then a small Roman elite, then a Byzantine monastery, before the river killed it.

That’s the story you’re about to read.

The Hill Was Already Sacred

The Greeks didn’t show up to empty land. The hill at Pojan has Bronze Age tumulus burials going back to 2,680 BC — that’s almost two thousand years before any Greek set foot here. Maria Grazia Amore’s BAR International excavation report on Tumuli 9, 10 and 11 documents the local violin-figurine idols (a southern-Adriatic adaptation of Early Cycladic forms) and bronze grave goods that mark this as part of the same Adriatic-Cetina cultural network that built tumuli at Rakića Kuće in Montenegro and Shtoj in northern Albania.

What’s wild is what they found inside one of those Illyrian tumuli: a Corinthian transport amphora dated to the last third of the 7th century BC. Greek goods buried with Illyrian dead, before the colony existed. Trade was already happening. The “founding” was less an arrival and more a formalization.

Which means the Taulantii didn’t just tolerate the Greeks — they invited them. J. J. Wilkes argues this directly in Ilirët. Olivier Picard makes the same case demographically: 200 men cannot impose themselves on a tribal population unless the tribe wants something out of the deal. What they wanted was probably trade access and a coastal partner against rival Illyrian groups inland.

The settlement was first called Gylakeia, after Gylax, the oikist (founder) sent over from Corinth. The rebrand to Apolonia — in honor of Apollo — came later, probably tied to the fall of the Corinthian Cypselid tyranny back home. There are 24 cities in the ancient Mediterranean named Apollonia. This one was the first.

The Bouleuterion

You’ve seen the photo even if you don’t think you have. Six fluted Corinthian columns, an inscribed architrave, the whole thing perched alone on a Mediterranean hilltop. It’s the symbol of Albanian archaeology and the cover image of nearly every book ever written about Illyria.

It’s not a temple. Everyone calls it a temple. It’s a Bouleuterion — a council chamber, where the city’s elected assembly met to argue about taxes and roads and which Roman emperor’s portrait to put up next. The full name is the Monument of Agonothetes, after Quintus Villius Crispinus Furius Proculus, the wealthy citizen who paid to build it sometime in the late 2nd century AD in memory of his dead brother. The dedicatory inscription, still legible on the architrave, is genuinely moving once you can read the Greek: a man memorializing a sibling by giving the city a building that’s still standing 1,800 years later.

The inauguration party featured 25 pairs of gladiators. Not 24. Not “around 25.” The inscription is exact.

Léon Rey’s French team rediscovered the facade in the 1930s, half-buried. The Albanian Institute of Monuments under Koço Zhegu reassembled it in the 1970s using anastylosis — putting original stones back in their original positions wherever possible, with discreet modern reinforcement.

Here’s the part that hurts: in June 2020, during the COVID lockdown when the park was closed and unsupervised, vandals knocked one of the columns over. The reconstruction is ongoing but, in the words of the park director, parts of the damage are irreparable. You wouldn’t notice from a tourist photo. From up close, you can see where the new mortar meets the old.

This is the building you came to see. Don’t rush it.

The Day Caesar Died

Late autumn 45 BC. Julius Caesar is planning a Parthian campaign. He has six legions camped in Macedonia and a great-nephew named Gaius Octavius, age 17, whom he’s named in his will but hasn’t told. Caesar sends the kid to Apollonia ahead of the campaign, with instructions to study rhetoric, philosophy, and military command. Octavian arrives with two friends he’d brought from Rome: Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, his future general and the man who would design Augustus’s Pantheon, and Gaius Maecenas, his future cultural minister, the patron of Virgil and Horace.

So picture this: three teenagers who would go on to invent Imperial Rome, learning the trade in a small Illyrian city.

His teachers at Apollonia included:

Athenodorus Cananites of Tarsus, the Stoic philosopher and former student of Posidonius of Rhodes. The same Athenodorus famous for telling Octavian, late in life, that whenever he was about to lose his temper as emperor, he should recite the Greek alphabet before reacting. Augustus reportedly did this for the rest of his life.

Apollodorus of Pergamon, the most prestigious Greek rhetorician of the age. Imagine the most expensive private tutor in Manhattan, except Athens.

Theogenes, a Greek mathematician and astrologer, who cast Octavian’s horoscope on the spot and told him he was destined for greatness. Octavian was so convinced, Suetonius tells us, that he later struck imperial coins featuring Capricorn, his birth sign.

On the Ides of March, 15 March 44 BC, Caesar was stabbed twenty-three times in the Theatre of Pompey. A freedman of Octavian’s mother, Atia, hopped a ship across the Adriatic. Within days the news reached Apollonia. Octavian’s officers urged him to take refuge with the legions in Macedonia and march on Rome. He refused. He sailed to Lupiae (modern Lecce), then to Brundisium, where he learned the contents of the will: he was Caesar’s adopted son and heir to three-quarters of the estate.

The Roman Republic ended on this hill. Not metaphorically. Causally. If Octavian hadn’t been at Apollonia, with the Macedonian legions an easy march away, he would have had no leverage to inherit Caesar’s political machine. The career that ended at Actium and produced the Empire began with him reading Greek philosophy on a hilltop in Albania.

I find this an unreasonable thing to be casual about. The signage at the park barely mentions it. Bring a friend who likes Roman history and watch their face when you tell them.

What’s Still Standing Today

Apollonia at its peak covered roughly 81 hectares inside the walls and as much as 137 hectares including the suburbs. Today, after a century of digging, about 5% has been excavated. The rest is under olive groves and wheat fields. Geophysical surveys can map streets and buildings underneath the soil, but funding to actually excavate runs out faster than archaeologists can submit grants.

What you see, in walking order from the main entrance:

The Bouleuterion / Monument of Agonothetes. Already covered above. Don’t miss the architrave inscription.

The Odeon. Directly across from the Bouleuterion. A small covered theater seating about 300, used for the city council and likely also as a teaching auditorium. Mixed Greek-and-Roman construction. Excavated in 1978 and reconstructed in the mid-1980s.

The Triumphal Arch. Four pillar bases and traces of three arched openings, about 14 m long. Probably built to commemorate Caracalla’s Parthian campaign of 217 AD. Caracalla was scheduled to visit Apollonia. He was assassinated en route. The arch may have been left unfinished — which would explain why it looks like it was put up in a hurry.

The Library / Prytaneion / Temple of Diana complex. East of the Bouleuterion. The “library” identification comes from symmetrical wall niches that almost certainly held shelving. The Prytaneion — the seat of the city’s chief magistrates — yielded eleven 2nd–3rd-century AD statues of judges during 1960 excavations, all now in the museum. Adjoining is the small Temple of Diana, identified by an in-situ statue of the goddess.

The Stoa. A Hellenistic colonnade running south of the Odeon, with three dozen Doric columns originally. One of the city’s oldest standing structures.

The Hellenistic Theatre. Northwest of the monumental center, cut into the hillside, 18-meter orchestra. The seating is divided into 12 sectors marked with Greek letters that have been associated with the city’s tribes. A German-Albanian team led by Henner von Hesberg dug here from 2006 to 2010. Less photogenic than the Bouleuterion, more telling about how the city actually worked.

The Nymphaeum. A 3rd-century BC rectangular basin fed by underground springs. The largest pre-Roman monument on site.

The temenos and Doric temple of Apollo. The sacred precinct on the higher of the two hilltops. A 5th-century BC Doric temple, of which only one column remains in situ — and that one was reused as a structural element by the medieval Orthodox monks (more on them below). Two small stone sanctuaries are nearby.

The acropolis. The military citadel on the upper hill. Best views in the park — across the Myzeqe plain to the Adriatic. The acropolis is what gets you the postcard shot.

The walls. Over 4 km of limestone fortifications, originally built around 300 BC and reinforced over the centuries. Big stretches still stand. The northeast gate has been a focus of recent French-Albanian excavations.

The House of Athena. A 3,500 m² peristyle villa outside the city walls with mosaic floors including a Nereid riding a dolphin and a panel of Achilles fighting Penthesileia. Sometimes accessible, sometimes roped off.

The Necropolis of Kryegyata. West of the city. This is where the layered story gets visible: archaic and Hellenistic Greek tombs sitting alongside Roman tomb-temples sitting alongside the Bronze Age Illyrian tumuli that started this whole thing.

The Eternal Fires of the Nymphaion

Here’s a story most guides skip. About 12 km southeast of Apollonia, near a village called Selenicë, the ground has been seeping bitumen — naturally occurring asphalt — since prehistory. Sometimes the fumes catch and flames flicker out of the rock. The ancients didn’t know what bitumen was. They thought the rocks were sacred and the flames were the breath of nymphs.

Strabo wrote about it in Geography VII.5.8: “In the country of the Apolloniates is a place called Nymphaeum; it is a rock that gives forth fire; and beneath it flow springs of warm water and asphalt — probably because the clods of asphalt in the earth are burned by the fire.”

There was a working oracle at the site, and Apollonia conquered Thronion around 450 BC partly to control it. The cult was tied to Apollo, the city’s namesake, and the eternal flame appeared on Apollonia’s bronze coinage. Cassius Dio later wrote that emperors and generals consulted the oracle before campaigns.

The Selenicë bitumen mines are still operational today and have been continuously since antiquity. A 2023 stable-isotope study in Molecules tracked Selenicë bitumen as far as Roca and Porto Badisco on the Italian Adriatic coast. Apollonia was the export hub.

You can’t visit the original Nymphaion site as a curated archaeological park — it’s an active industrial mine. But knowing it’s there, and knowing the city’s name and its fortunes were tied to it, changes how you read the ruins.

Apollonia’s War Years

Apollonia spent four centuries as a small power surrounded by giants. The summary version, because the full version is a graduate seminar:

314–312 BC: Cassander of Macedon storms the city. Glaucias of the Taulantii — yes, an Illyrian king — counter-attacks. The Spartan prince Acrotatus, blown ashore by a storm, ends up negotiating between the two sides. The citizens expel the Macedonian garrison. For a few years Apollonia sits under Taulantian Illyrian protection, which is the cleanest illustration you’ll find that this city was always part of the Illyrian world.

282 BC: Pyrrhus of Epirus — the same Pyrrhus of “Pyrrhic victory” — incorporates Apollonia into his realm. Pyrrhus was raised at the Taulantii court of Glaucias. The Illyrian thread doesn’t break.

229 BC: Apollonia allies with Rome at the start of the First Illyrian War. This is the city’s pivot west.

216 BC: Philip V of Macedon sails up the Adriatic with 100 light ships to attack Apollonia. Ten Roman quinqueremes show up. Philip turns and runs.

214 BC: Philip tries again, this time besieging from the Vjosa river. The Roman commander Marcus Valerius Laevinus sends 2,000 troops under Quintus Naevius Crista, who slip into the city by night, sortie out the next night, and rout Philip’s army. Philip burns his own fleet and walks home to Macedonia.

168 BC: Apollonia hosts the Roman base of L. Anicius Gallus during the campaign that ends the Illyrian kingdom of Gentius. The Roman force is reinforced by 2,000 Parthini infantry under chiefs named Epicadus and Algalsus — Illyrian troops fighting under Apollonian command. The city’s military strength was always Illyrian.

48 BC: Apollonia takes Caesar’s side in the civil war. Cicero, in his Eleventh Philippic, describes the city as magna urbs et gravis — “a great and important city.” The phrase is universally misquoted today as if it were a compliment. Cicero was actually complaining that Mark Antony’s brother Gaius was holding it as an enemy stronghold. Either way, the city mattered enough that the most famous orator of the late Republic mentioned it by name.

44 BC: See above, re: Caesar’s death.

30 BC onward: Augustus rewards the city with the privileged status of civitas libera (free city) and lavishes it with monuments. The 2nd century AD brings the Bouleuterion, Odeon, Library, Triumphal Arch, and the House of Athena. The city is rich. It’s also doomed.

The City That a River Killed

Apollonia wasn’t sacked. It wasn’t burned. There’s no famous siege at the end. It was killed by an earthquake.

Sometime in the 3rd century AD — the exact date is lost — a large earthquake shifted the course of the Aoös river (modern Vjosa). The river’s old channel had been Apollonia’s harbor, the artery of its economy. The new channel left the harbor stranded inland. Within decades the harbor silted up. The plain went swampy. Malaria moved in. The merchants moved out.

By the 4th century, what had been a city of tens of thousands was a small Christian community. Bishops named Feliks (at the Council of Ephesus, 431) and Eusebius (at the Council of Chalcedon, 451) attest a continuing see. The 6th-century Synecdemus of Hierocles still lists Apollonia among the 20 cities of Epirus Nova, but most of the population had already migrated south to Aulona — modern Vlora.

The phrase you want to remember is: Apollonia died of geology, not history.

The Medieval Monastery

Around the year 1250 (some sources say 1282, under Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos), Eastern Orthodox monks came back to the abandoned hill and built the Monastery and Church of Saint Mary — Shën Mëri in Albanian — directly inside the ancient sacred precinct. They reused dressed stone wherever they could, including a 5th-century BC Doric column from the Temple of Apollo, which they incorporated as a structural element. The church has Byzantine frescoes inside (no photography allowed), grotesque exterior figures on its pillars, a high bell tower, and a refectory with mosaics.

A Greek-language school operated here in 1684 and survived into the 1880s.

Today the monastery houses the Muzeu Arkeologjik i Apolonisë, founded in 1958, looted in the 1991–92 unrest, and reopened in December 2011 with UNESCO Millennium Development Goals funding. Six rooms of finds: Hellenistic and Roman sculpture, the eleven Prytaneion judge-statues, ceramics, the Tritos-son-of-Plator gravestone, the funerary stele of a woman in Illyrian dress, mosaics in the refectory.

The crown jewel pieces — the Hadrian portrait head, several major statues — are at the National Archaeological Museum in Tirana. A few left Albania during the 19th-century looting era and ended up at the Louvre and Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. None of those institutions are giving them back.

How Excavation Got Us Here

Brief institutional history because it matters when you’re standing in front of stones:

1916–1918: First systematic excavation, by the Austro-Hungarian occupation forces during World War I.

1924–1938: The legendary French mission of Léon Rey (1877–1954). This is when the Bouleuterion and most of the Monumental Centre come to light. Rey is buried near the site at his own request.

1939–45: Italian and German occupations. Damage. Looting.

1947 onward: The Albanian Institute of Archaeology, with major campaigns in 1958–1960 led by Selim Islami with the Soviet professor Vladimir Blavatsky.

1967: Communist-era construction of about 400 concrete bunkers in the protected zone, plus roadworks. Significant damage.

1976: Anastylotic restoration of the Bouleuterion facade by Koço Zhegu of the Institute of Monuments of Tirana.

1991–92: The collapse of communism. The museum is looted. Site repeatedly plundered for the antiquities market.

1992: Pierre Cabanes (Paris-Nanterre) and Neritan Ceka (Tirana) co-found the Mission Épigraphique et Archéologique en Albanie. Continuous Franco-Albanian fieldwork ever since, currently directed by Jean-Luc Lamboley and Saïmir Shpuza. Their two-volume Corpus des inscriptions grecques d’Illyrie méridionale et d’Épire (1995, 1997) is the foundational scholarly text for everything I’ve told you in this article.

2006–2010: German-Albanian team excavates the Hellenistic theatre.

2011: New on-site museum opens after UNESCO restoration.

2014: Apollonia goes on UNESCO’s Tentative List as a mixed cultural-and-natural property. (The grounds are also habitat for the threatened Hermann’s tortoise.) It is not yet inscribed as a World Heritage Site — that process has been delayed by management and protection issues, including the 1967 bunkers and the lingering 1991 looting.

June 2020: The Bouleuterion vandalism mentioned above.

Informacion praktik

A visitor flagged that this page didn’t have hours and ticket info. They were right. Fixed below. Most of this is verified to early 2026 and confirmed against the official site at apolloniaarchaeologicalpark.al, but Albanian archaeological park tariffs were re-set in September 2025, and I’d ground-truth at the gate before relying on these for a printed itinerary.

Hours

The Apollonia Archaeological Park runs on a two-season schedule:

Summer (March–October): Tuesday through Sunday, 9:00 to 18:00. In peak July–August some sources report extended hours up to 20:00.

Winter (1 November – 28/29 February): Tuesday through Sunday, 9:00 to 16:00.

Closed Mondays.

If you’re visiting on an Albanian national or Orthodox religious holiday, call ahead. Hours shift unpredictably.

Tickets

Following the September 2025 ministerial re-tariffication, the working ranges are:

Adults: 400–600 LEK (approximately €4–6).

Reduced (children under 18, students with valid ID): 150–300 LEK.

Seniors and persons with disabilities: around 300 LEK.

Museum (inside the monastery): Generally included with the park ticket. Some sources still report a separate 600 LEK museum fee. Confirm at the booth.

Cash only, in lek. No card readers. The nearest ATMs are in Fier town center, 12 km away.

Albania occasionally waives entry fees on selected heritage holidays — the International Day of Monuments and Sites (April 18) is the most reliable. Worth checking.

Arritja atje

From Tirana by car: About 1h 45m to 2h via the A2/SH4 motorway (Tirana-Durrës-Fier). Take the Pojan exit and follow signs to “Parku Arkeologjik i Apolonisë.” Parking is free at the gate. They’re building a larger lot.

From Tirana by public transport: Frequent intercity buses and furgons run from Tirana’s South & North Terminal to Fier, hourly through the day, journey ~2h 15m, fare 400–600 LEK. From Fier you can grab a local minibus to Pojan village (50–100 LEK) and walk 20 minutes uphill, or just take a taxi from Fier directly to the park gate for 500–700 LEK.

From Vlora: 35–40 minutes by car. Buses to Fier run regularly, 40 min, ~250 LEK.

From Berat: About 1 hour by car. Furgons via Fier 1 to 1.5 hours, ~300 LEK.

From Durrës: About 1 hour via the motorway.

Kur të shkoni

The site is on a fully exposed hilltop. There is essentially no shade. Plan accordingly.

Best: April-May and September-October. Mild temperatures, wildflowers, no crowds.

Tolerable: June, late September. Heat manageable if you go early or late.

Brutal: July-August. Regularly 35 °C+ with the sun directly on you. If you must, go at 9:00 sharp or after 16:00.

Honest answer for winter: the park stays open with reduced hours, you’ll have it almost to yourself, and the green of the surrounding plain in February is genuinely beautiful. Bring a coat for the Adriatic wind.

How Long to Plan

Minimum: 2 hours for the Monumental Centre + monastery + museum.

Right amount: Half day, 3-4 hours. You can walk the walls, climb to the acropolis, see the theatre and the Nymphaeum, and actually look at things in the museum.

Plus a meal: Add an hour at one of the small on-site cafés, if they’re open. (See below.)

Facilities, Or Lack Thereof

Toilets: Inside the monastery complex.

Cafés/restaurants: Two small establishments at the top of the site. Open inconsistently. I’ve shown up in shoulder season and found them shuttered. Bring water and snacks. Bring more water than you think you need.

Souvenir shop: Tiny shop outside the monastery gate. Open during park hours.

Signage: Sparse and inconsistent. The park’s free Android app Apolonia e Ilirisë and the 3D virtual tour on the official website are better than the on-site panels. Download before you arrive — cell signal at the site is weak.

Aksesueshmëria

I’ll be straight with you. Apollonia is not wheelchair-accessible in any meaningful sense. It’s on a hill, the paths are uneven gravel, grass and stone with frequent steps, and even the monastery courtyard has thresholds and uneven flagstones. Visitors with limited mobility can still see the monastery, the museum, and the Bouleuterion from the main path. The theatre, Nymphaeum, and acropolis are out of reach without serious assistance.

Guides

The park offers guided tours in English and Italian, traditionally three times a day in season. Arrange at the booth or call +355 (0) 38 320 337 ahead.

If you want a serious historical tour, hire a guide who has actually read Cabanes. Most generic Tirana day-tour guides will give you the “founded by Greek colonists, vacationed by wealthy Romans” script. That’s the tourism cliché. Ask for someone who can talk about the bioarchaeology, the Octavian episode, or the Cabanes-Drini inscription corpus, and you’ll know within 30 seconds whether you have the right guide.

Fotografia

Allowed everywhere in the archaeological park. Inside the Church of Saint Mary, no photos. The frescoes are sensitive and the rule is enforced.

Çfarë të Sillni

Water (1.5 to 2 L per person in summer). Sun hat. High-SPF sunscreen. Sturdy walking shoes — the stones are slippery when wet and uneven everywhere. Cash in lek. A light jacket for the breeze on the acropolis even in August. Insect repellent in summer. If you’re visiting the monastery, modest dress is appreciated.

What to Pair Apollonia With

This is where Apollonia gets really good. The hill itself is a half-day. But the surrounding 30 km is one of the densest concentrations of layered history anywhere in the Balkans.

Ardenica Monastery, 18 km north. Founded in 1282 under Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos. Site of Skanderbeg’s 1451 marriage. Frescoes by the Zografi brothers. Tiny entrance fee, ~100 LEK. Open 8:00–16:00. The classic half-day pairing with Apollonia, and the monastery’s location on a hill above the Myzeqe plain mirrors Apollonia’s setting in a way that feels intentional.

Byllis, 45 km southeast. The great Illyrian koinon capital. Theatre seating 7,500. Justinianic walls. Mosaics. The intellectual pairing — this is the Illyrian highland city to Apollonia’s coastal hybrid. Same archaeological park administration, but a separate site, separate ticket, and a full day to do properly.

Beratit, 1 hour east. UNESCO city of a thousand windows. Standard Tirana day-trip pairing.

Vlorë and the Albanian Riviera. Karavasta Lagoon (UNESCO biosphere, Dalmatian pelicans), then south to the coast. Apollonia + a beach day is a real itinerary, not a stretch.

Fier town. Modern regional centre, founded 1864. You’ll pass through. Stop for a coffee. The Vjosa river flows through it.

The Numbers That Matter

2,680 BC — calibrated date of the oldest Illyrian tumulus burial under the city.

200 — Greek colonists who arrived around 600 BC.

~90% — share of Apollonia’s colonial-era population that grouped genetically with Illyrians, not Greeks (McIlvaine, Schepartz, Larsen 2014).

24 — number of cities in the ancient Mediterranean named Apollonia. This was the first.

4 km+ — length of the city walls at peak.

81 hectares — area inside the walls.

5% — share of the ancient city that has been excavated.

18 — age of Octavian when he was studying here on the Ides of March, 44 BC.

25 pairs — gladiators who fought at the dedication of the Bouleuterion.

1924 — year Léon Rey’s French mission began.

2014 — year Apollonia was added to UNESCO’s Tentative List.

2020 — year vandals knocked over a column of the Bouleuterion.

Should You Go?

If you’re coming to Albania to lie on a beach, Apollonia is a half-day detour and worth it. If you’re coming for the history, Apollonia is the reason you came, and you don’t know it yet.

It’s not Pompeii. It’s not Ephesus. The Italians and the Turks have museums; we have a hill with 5% excavated and the rest under wheat. The signage is bad. The café might be closed. The Bouleuterion has a column held together with new mortar because somebody got bored during a lockdown.

But this is the place where Octavian got the news that ended the Roman Republic. This is the city Aristotle used as the textbook example of how oligarchies actually work. This is where the Illyrian and Greek worlds physically met — and where the Illyrians outlasted everyone, even when 200 Corinthians showed up in their boats and decided to call it Apollonia. This is where a 13th-century Orthodox monastery was built out of the literal stones of a pagan temple. This is where a river killed a city, then the bitumen-mining village 12 km away kept burning its eternal flame for another thousand years.

Some places don’t survive because someone protected them. They survive because they were Illyrian first, which is to say they were stubborn, and the people who lived here just kept on living here through Greek colonists, Roman free-city status, Byzantine bishops, Slavic raids, Ottoman dynasties, communist bunkers, post-1991 looting, and a 2020 lockdown vandalism — and the bones in the necropolis say what the inscriptions say what Aristotle said what the DNA says: this was always our hill.

Bring water. Wear a hat. Tell the kids who Octavian was. Look for Tritos, son of Plator in the museum. Come early, leave late, and stand on the acropolis at sunset facing the Adriatic.

We were here first. We’re still here.