BUTRINTO. - An ancient city of Epirus (now in southern Albania, prefecture of Argirocastro) situated south of Santi Quaranta, in a location near the sea and opposite the island of Corfu. In the now uninhabited and wild area, excavations carried out by an Italian archaeological mission directed by L. M. Ugolini have brought to light, since 1928, the remains of Βουθρωτόν or Buthrotum, an urban center of some importance in the Greek and Roman ages.
The first record of the introduction of Christianity to B. dates to the mid-3rd century and concerns the martyrdom of St. Terino, which took place in the city’s theater during the persecution of Decius.
The most notable Christian-era monument uncovered in the excavations is a circular-plan baptistery (internal diameter 13.50 m). The curved interior arrangement was concealed externally by walls arranged in a square, which created secondary spaces with irregular triangular plans. Two internal peristyles, each of eight reused granite columns, subdivided the interior space into concentric zones. Numerous masonry semicolumns were attached to the inside of the circular wall, aligned with the radial axes of the columns.
Only a few capitals and some architraves provide elements for the ideal reconstruction of the monument, which must have been roofed and equipped with windows and hypocausts. At the center of the structure is the immersion baptismal font; this has an external circular perimeter, while internally it is in a four-lobed cruciform plan and lined with marble.
The mosaic pavement, excellently preserved in its rich polychromy and varied zoomorphic decoration, belongs to the late imperial age (4th century). The white-ground mosaic is divided into seven concentric rings, five with stylized or geometric motifs (circles
In conclusion, the building does not appear to have been constructed expressly as a baptistery, but was adapted to that purpose only in the 5th–6th century.
Other sacred structures have been traced at B.: a Byzantine church on the hilltop, a medieval single-nave sacellum, a Venetian-era three-aisled Latin-cross basilica built over the remains of a Byzantine-era trichora cell, and finally a few ruins of a trichora church at the southern edge of the plain at the foot of the hill.