On the hunt for spolia in Durrës, ancient Dyrrachium. Part 1: The Monogram

Anyone who likes spolia can have great fun walking through Durrës spotting pieces here and there. The Venetian tower, a famous landmark of the city, has plenty of it including column drums, a Roman inscription and a relief depiction of Mercury.  But we'll look at those another day. 

The Venetian tower
This post focuses on a really interesting piece of spolia in a section of wall that can be seen just off Sheshi Liria, Durrës’ main square. There are two sections of wall in this area, one between the amphitheatre and the Grand Mosque and the other between the town hall and the aptly named bar ‘The Wall’. The wall was built as a cross wall, starting at one of the towers of the Angevin citadel and running east. Scholars usually assign the building of the wall to the Ottomans who took the city in 1503, though some think it was built in the 15th century by the Venetians to protect the shrinking population of the town of Durazzo, an important trading possession of the Venetians, from the Ottoman hinterland.  

The small tower of the cross-wall

A section of the cross wall, with the remains of a small square tower, may be seen near ‘The Wall’ bar. The tower is a real mosaic of spolia including a Roman (?) well head and various architectural elements. There are also some large ashlar blocks that are probably from the Hellenistic period city walls. These early city walls enclosed two hills: Hill 98 (where King Zog’s Villa is situated) and the one behind the amphitheatre. The walls no longer exist, though Gilkes notes a section of Hellenistic ashlar masonry visible behind a new house on a path leading up to King Zog’s villa, but I must admit that I have not been able to locate it.  

 

The monogram is in the centre of the block
One of the limestone blocks bears the monogram of a delta (Δ) with lines inside it. The monogram is not very deeply carved but is visible in the centre of the stone block. Letters or symbols on masonry are not uncommon and can have a variety of meanings, including as a key to how blocks fit together (as in the theatre at Messene in Greece), to indicate work done by a particular mason, or to display who is responsible for the construction.  

The ΔΑ monogram, Apollonia 
Monograms made up of the letters Δ and Α combined are found on stone blocks and tiles in several ancient cities, and are shorthand for δαμόσιος (public), indicating that the building was commissioned by the state. In Albania, the most well-known examples of this are in the city of Apollonia. In Apollonia a section of the perimeter wall and the wall surrounding the temenos hill both have blocks inscribed with the ligature ΔΑ. The section of the temenos wall with the arched entrance and passageway to the sacred area where the temple of Apollo was situated is particularly rich in examples. This section of the wall has been dated to the middle of the 3rd century BCE.  
The temenos wall showing the monograms, Apollonia

The size and type of the block in question in Durrës would suggest that it came from a wall built in the Hellenistic period of the city’s history, and the monogram provides additional evidence to support the block being part of the early city walls, built by the city state.  The ligature is not the same as the one in Apollonia – instead of an internal line across the triangle of the delta the example here has a shape inside which I originally thought was an upsilon Y (reading DY for Dyrrachium[1]), but could be part of an upper-case alpha, reading ΔΑ (δαμόσιος). I am not an expert in masons’ marks, but I hope that someone who is can take this further. In the meantime, I shall be on the look-out for more monograms in the city.  

 

The spolia in situ in the tower, Durrës


 

Further Reading  

 

Ceka, N., Apollonia: Its History and Monuments, Migjeni, 2005 

 

Gilkes, O., Albania: An Archaeological Guide, I.B. Tauris, 2013  

 

Gutteridge, A., Cultural Geographies and the ‘ambition of Latin Europe’: the city of Durrës and its fortifications c400-1501, Archaeologica Medievale XXX, 2003 

 

Themelis, P., & Sidiropoulos K., The Theatre at Messene: Building Phases and Masons’ Marks in Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens, Volume 1, 2015 

 

 


[1] The city was originally known as Epidamnus, though one account says that the promontory was called Epidamnus and the settlement itself Dyrrachium. Dyrrachium became the official name of the city after it passed to Roman control in 229BCE, though the city had minted coins under the name Dyrrachium with the monogram DYP as early as the 5th century. According to Pausanias the Roman city was not in exactly the same place as the ancient one and took the name Dyrrachium from its founder. 



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