A Guide to Visiting Butrint National Park, Albania — ALONG DUSTY ROADS

The ancient city of Butrint sits quietly at the edge of a lagoon, surrounded by reeds and shifting water, where birds skim low across the surface and trees grow through broken stone. These ruins that cross centuries are scattered rather than grand, softened by light, half-covered in vegetation, and often left just as they were found.

Thresholds still carpeted in moss, marble chipped and half-buried in the grass, footpaths winding through eucalyptus and fig. In some places, the forest has taken over; in others, the layout of the city is still easy to trace – gates, arches, the outline of a street.

For over two thousand years, people lived, built, and worshipped here.

First came the Illyrians, then the Greeks, who founded a small colony on the hillside in the 4th century BC. The Romans followed – as they usually did – expanding the settlement into a flourishing port, complete with bathhouses, a forum, and an amphitheatre that still holds water during the winter months. Later, Butrint became a centre of early Christian worship under the Byzantines. Even the Venetians left their mark, strengthening the fortifications and building the tower that now looks down across the Vivari Channel.

And then, silence.

The city was abandoned in the late Middle Ages, its decline blamed on a combination of earthquakes, shifting coastlines, disease, and neglect. Over time, fig trees wrapped themselves around the columns. Ivy crept over mosaic floors. The forest thickened, and Butrint slowly disappeared from view.

It wasn’t until the 20th century that archaeologists began peeling back the layers. The theatre was the first to emerge, carved into the slope, with rows of stone seats still encircling the stage. Nearby, the floor of the baptistery appeared beneath the soil – a surprisingly intact mosaic of terracotta and pale stone – and further along, the basilica began to take shape, its columns fallen but present. Gateways were cleared, cisterns emptied, domestic walls traced in chalky foundations.

Slowly, a city started to return to the surface.

Butrint National Archeological Park – the first UNESCO site in Albania – is easy to explore on foot, with a trail that loops through shaded paths and open clearings, past everything that still stands and plenty that only just remains. There’s no fixed order to follow. You might find yourself ducking through a gateway without knowing where it leads, pausing beside a wall where Roman brick meets Byzantine stone, or realising halfway round that you’ve covered centuries without really trying. It’s compact but spacious, and there’s enough room between things to let the place breathe.

For travellers, it can offer a welcome change of pace and context from the southern beaches.

If you’re staying in nearby Ksamil or Sarandë, it’s easy to get here – a short, scenic drive or a bus ride that takes less than an hour. But what it offers is something harder to come by: a few hours of quiet, and just enough left behind to let you imagine the rest.

Indeed, whilst Ksamil didn’t hit our expectations, Butrint actually surpassed them.