On the hunt for spolia in Durrës, ancient Dyrrachium. Part 2

Although the city of Durrës has been a thriving settlement since at least the middle of the first millennium BCE, there is very little of the earliest phases of the city visible today. The most famous archaeological site is the amphitheatre, which is dated to the 2nd century CE, but it’s a challenge to find parts of the city that come from the earlier periods.   

Luckily for us, pieces of worked stone are often reused in later structures, and there are various places in Durrës where spolia (repurposed stone) can be seen. An earlier blog post looked at a piece of stone which had the monogram of the city on it which most likely came from the city walls of the Hellenistic period.  

An example of the spolia that can be see in the town 

This post looks at a piece of stone which provides evidence for a building which must have been dated to the Hellenistic period of Dyrrachium (4th/3rd centuries BCE). The piece appears to be a fragmentary column drum, and though there are many of those to be seen around the city, this one is unusual as it is octagonal rather than smooth or fluted. 

 

Originally an Illyrian settlement called Epidamnus, the city later known as Dyrrachium and eventually Durrës was colonised by Greeks from Corinth and Corcyra in the early 7^th century BCE, and like other cities in Illyria and Epirus, adopted several forms of Greek architecture. It is very likely that the city would have had an agora and stoas, but as the city has been continuously occupied and repeatedly built upon since its founding, we don’t know where exactly it would have been.  

Stoas were public buildings, often around the market place or agora of a city, and provided sheltered areas for people to gather or to be used by merchants or administrators. They were common features in cities in the Classical and Hellenistic world.  

Stoa at Apollonia 

Other cities which were not so successful and which were abandoned for one reason or another give us a clue as to what a stoa in the city might have looked like. Apollonia has the remains of a two stoas, one which was built upon, and another which survived quite well so it is easy to make out its original plan. The stoa had two storeys, the lower of which had rather squat octagonal columns, some drums of which can be seen in the photograph below. The stoa is dated to the 3^rd century BCE.

 

Octagonal columns drums in the stoa, Apollonia 

These stoas with octagonal columns are a feature of the ancient cities in Albania. At Byllis there are three stoas with the such columns, two framing the area of the agora, and one of these still has some column drums in situ. They have been dated to the 4th/3rd century BCE. There are also octagonal supporting columns in the room of unknown function usually referred to as the 'treasury' or 'armoury'. 

One of the stoas at Byllis, with octagonal drums in situ.

At Butrint, the remains of a stoa can be found above the ‘peristyle building’ to the east of, and predating the theatre (which has been dated to the 3^rd century BCE). The columns of the stoa are no longer in situ. However, a fragment of an octagonal column may be seen in the basilica, clearly having been reused as building material at some stage.

Fragment of octagonal column drum in Butrint

Though there are no visible remains of anything resembling the walls of a stoa from ancient Dyrrachium, there is an octagonal column drum – or at least half of one - reused in the building of a wall.  It is in the photograph below.

Section of part of an octagonal column repurposed in the cross wall in Durrës

At some point in the 15^th or 16^th century CE, probably when the population of the city declined, a cross wall was built running west-east from the citadel of Dyrrachium, behind the amphitheatre. The exact date of the building of the wall and whether it was built by the Venetians or during Ottoman period has not been established, but whoever built the wall re-used building material including stone blocks, funerary stelae, sculpture fragments, Roman brick and this half of an octagonal column drum. The drum can be seen on the side of the cross wall facing the mosque.  

 

The cross wall in Durrës as it is today. 

Though it is only part of a column, it has a big story to tell, being likely evidence for the existence of a stoa (and therefore perhaps an agora) in 4^th or 3^rd century BCE Dyrrachium, the location of which is somewhere under the modern town.