Butrint, where every empire in the Ionian left a layer

Butrint occupies a small hill on a peninsula between a lagoon and the Vivari Channel, which winds out to the straits of Corfu. It is a perfect site for a city: easily defended, rich in fish and fresh water, and on the sea route between Greece and Italy. It was occupied, on and off, from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages, and each period built on the ruins of the one before. Then it was largely abandoned and swallowed by marsh and forest. Today it is the most important archaeological site in Albania and a World Heritage Site, and its setting, among trees and water, is as much a part of its appeal as the ruins themselves.

The Romans had a story about its origins. In Virgil's Aeneid, the Trojan hero Aeneas, fleeing the fall of Troy, stops at Buthrotum and finds there other Trojan exiles who have built a little copy of their lost city. It is a legend, but it shows that the place was already old and well known by the time of Augustus.

The Greek city

The real history begins with Greek settlers, who built a fortified town on the hill from around the seventh or sixth century BC. Butrint grew around a sanctuary of Asclepius, the god of healing, where the sick came in search of cures. The sanctuary's theatre, built into the side of the hill in the third century BC, is one of the site's most beautiful features. Its stone seats face a stage that is often half-flooded by the rising water table, with frogs croaking from the orchestra. Inscriptions on its walls record the freeing of slaves, which was sometimes celebrated at the sanctuary. The massive stone walls of the Greek city, with the Lion Gate, named after a relief of a lion devouring a bull above its lintel, still ring the hill.

Rome and Byzantium

In the first century BC, Julius Caesar and then Augustus founded a Roman colony at Butrint for veterans. The town expanded onto the plain across the channel, with an aqueduct, baths, a forum and fine houses, and it flourished for several centuries. In the Christian era, it became the seat of a bishop. The great baptistery of the sixth century, a circular building whose floor is one of the finest early Christian mosaics in the region, with peacocks, deer and vines, is usually kept covered with sand to protect it. The Great Basilica, nearby, still stands to roof height in places.

Venice, Ali Pasha and the forest

In the Middle Ages, Butrint passed between Byzantines, Normans, Angevins and others. From the fourteenth century, the Venetians, who held Corfu across the water, controlled it as a fishing station and outpost. They built a castle on the acropolis and a triangular fortress across the channel. In the early nineteenth century, Ali Pasha, the powerful Ottoman governor of the region, built a fortress at the mouth of the channel. By then the city itself had been abandoned, and malarial marsh and forest had covered it.

Serious excavation began in the 1920s under Italian archaeologists, and since the 1990s a British-funded foundation has worked with Albanian archaeologists to excavate, protect and present the site. The surrounding area, with its lagoon, wetlands and woods, is now a national park.

A small cable ferry carries vehicles and walkers across the Vivari Channel beside the Venetian tower, and the crossing gives a sense of how the site was defended by water on almost every side.

Travelsphere's Albania Discovered: Tirana and Beyond, seven nights, includes Butrint with Tirana, Gjirokastër, Sarandë, Vlora, Berat, Durrës and Krujë, and the coastal villages of Lukova, Borsh and Qeparo.

Explore Worldwide's Highlights of Albania, ten nights from March to October, includes Butrint and Saranda with Tirana, Elbasan, Lake Ohrid at Pogradec, Voskopoja, Korçë, Gjirokastër, Himara, Llogara National Park, one of Ali Pasha's fortresses and Vlora.

Butrint is about half an hour's drive south of Sarandë. Arrive early, before the heat and the tour groups from the cruise ships and the ferries from Corfu, and allow a good three hours. Spring is the loveliest time, when the woods are green and full of birdsong and the tortoises are out on the paths.