Apollonia Archaeological Park
Ruined Greek and Roman city above the Vjosa plain, with a monastery museum inside the park.
Apollonia was founded around 588 BC by Greek settlers from Corinth and Corcyra on a ridge above the Vjosa valley, a short distance inland from the Adriatic. It grew into one of the wealthiest cities of the Illyrian coast, minting its own coinage and serving as a station on the Via Egnatia. Cicero called it a great and important city, and the young Octavian was studying rhetoric here when news reached him of Caesar's murder.
The excavated area covers only a fraction of the walled city. Visitors follow paths past the second-century monument of the agonothetes with its restored colonnade, the odeon, the library portico, a small theatre, the bouleuterion steps and long stretches of defensive wall. At the centre of the park stands the thirteenth-century Orthodox monastery of Saint Mary, whose refectory and cloister house the site museum of sculpture, pottery, inscriptions and coins.
Highlights
- Restored colonnade of the second-century monument of the agonothetes
- Roman odeon and the portico identified as the city library
- Thirteenth-century monastery of Saint Mary with its site museum
- City walls and theatre set above the Vjosa plain
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