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The walled town of Dyrrachium (Durres): settlement and dynamics

Durres (at various times in the past known as Epidamnos, Dyrrachium and Dyrrachion) lies on the Adriatic coast of Albania, c.35 km west of Tirana. The town has been continuously occupied, in some form or other, at least since the Archaic Greek period. Today it presents itself to the modern traveller arriving across the Adriatic as a busy and rapidly changing port. The relationship of the town with the sea has shaped its urban dynamic in ways which, as yet, are imperfectly understood. Modern Durres lies at the S tip of a peninsula c.10 km in length. The land to the northwest of the town is hilly, and this terrain extends as far as the ancient remains known as Porto Romano, c.7 km north of the town. The land northeast of the town is flat and low-lying, currently arable farmland criss-crossed by small irrigation canals (fig. 1). It was drained and reclaimed from marshland under the Communist régime. The overall impression of the topography around Durres (fig. 2) is that the area of high ground had once been an island, detached from the mainland or joined only by a sandbar, and that this relationship has fluctuated over time as a result of small seismic shifts, rising sea levels, and other factors. Any understanding of the town over time has to be placed against as accurate as possible an understanding of these and other features of what is a rapidly changing environment.