BUTRINT. - Ancient city of Epirus (today in southern Albania, prefecture of Gjirokastër) situated south of Saranda, in a locality close to the sea and facing the island of Corfu. In the area, now uninhabited and wild, the excavations carried out by an Italian archaeological mission directed by L. M. Ugolini have brought to light, beginning in 1928, the remains of Βουθρανόν or Buthrotum, an urban center of some importance in the Greek and Roman age.
The first notice of the introduction of Christianity at B. dates to the middle of the 3rd century and concerns the martyrdom of St. Therinus, which took place in the theater of the city, during the persecution of Decius.
The most notable monument of the Christian age to reappear in the excavations is a baptistery with a circular plan (internal diameter 13.50 m). The interior curvilinear arrangement was concealed on the outside by walls disposed according to a square, which formed secondary rooms with a triangular mixed-linear plan. Two internal peristyles, each of 8 granite columns of spoliation, divided the interior space into concentric zones. Numerous masonry half-columns were set against the inside of the circular wall, in correlation with the radial alignments of the columns.
Only a few capitals and some architraves can offer elements for the ideal reconstruction of the monument, which must have been covered with a roof and provided with windows and hypocausts. At the center of the construction one notes the basin for the baptismal rite by immersion; this shows on the outside a circular perimeter, while internally it has a cruciform quatrefoil plan and is revetted with marbles.
The mosaic floor, quite well preserved in its rich polychromy and in its varied zoomorphic figured decoration, belongs to the late imperial age (4th century). The mosaic with a white background is divided into 7 concentric rings, 5 with stylized or geometric motifs (knotted or intersecting circles, undulating ivy tendrils) and 2 characterized by a continuous series of medallions (69 in all), in each of which an animal is represented, with vividness and often with wit.
Only at a later time (5th-6th century) were two mosaic panels symbolizing the Eucharist and Baptism set into the floor, along the path from the entrance door to the baptismal basin.
The first represents two peacocks facing each other toward the mystic vessel, from which vine tendrils depart with doves that feed on their grapes; the other depicts two stags drinking at the spring; higher up the triumphant cross, placed beneath an honorary arch, is flanked by two palms.
In conclusion, the building does not seem to have been constructed expressly as a baptistery, but adapted to that purpose only in the 5th-6th century.
Other sacred buildings have been traced at B.: a Byzantine church on the summit of the hill, a medieval chapel with a single nave, a basilica with a Latin cross and three naves, built in the Venetian era on the remains of a trichora cella of the Byzantine age. Finally, a few ruins of a trichora church have appeared at the southern end of the plain situated at the foot of the hill.