The expansion of Butrint - Butrint, Albania

The aqueduct

Together with the laying of a new forum space, the other main public building programme instigated in the new Roman city of Butrint was undoubtedly the aqueduct. The line of its brick-built piers stand proud across the Vrina Plain and in front of the Tower Gate in Butrint. The line can be traced to a point slightly to the southeast of Xarra and the source of the water was probably a spring 12 km south of Butrint near Çuka e Aitoit.

A header tank – originally situated on a shingle bank in the Vivari Channel, but now on the edge of the Plain itself – marks where the aqueduct traversed the channel before entering the city at the Tower Gate. There, the water fed into a large cistern (or castellum divisorium) located in the area now occupied by the Great Basilica where the Hellenistic city wall had been removed.

The aqueduct may have formed part of a bridge carrying pedestrian and possibly wheeled traffic across the channel. This bridge was a substantial engineering feat, spanning a considerable stretch of water (at least 200 m), and must have had a significant impact, both visually and symbolically, emphasising the fact that Butrint was no longer just a small port, but was connected by road to the wider entity of the Roman world.

The alignment of the aqueduct appears to coincide with the grid plan of the suburb on the Vrina Plain and other features in the valley. It seems likely then that it formed part of a programme of centuriation, as found elsewhere in Greece and at Phoenicê and Nicopolis.

The aqueduct was clearly rebuilt or altered on at least two occasions; the technique of one of these provides a approximate terminus ante quem of the second half of the 1st century AD for its construction. Augustan period coins minted at Butrint depict the long arcade of the aqueduct bridge. Coins with a similar motif were also minted during the reign of Nero; hence the first grant was probably made during the reign of Augustus and continued or finished during the time of Nero. Aqueducts were extremely costly to build and consequently many were state-sponsored initiatives. They tended to be grand imperial gestures rather than essential public amenities sponsored by private patronage.

The supply of copious quantities of water, primarily for conspicuous public use in the form of bath-houses and fountains, is essentially a Roman innovation, and was a key feature of a number of Roman towns in Greece and Epirus. Some towns such as Corinth and Athens do not appear to have acquired aqueducts until the reign of Hadrian, but at Butrint it seems to have been an important symbolic and practical feature of the city’s new Roman identity.