BUTRINTO. – Ancient city of Epirus (today in southern Albania, prefecture of Argyrokastro), situated south of Santi Quaranta, in a place near the sea and opposite the island of Corfu. In the area, now uninhabited and wild, excavations conducted 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 centre of some importance in the Greek and Roman periods.
The first information concerning the introduction of Christianity into B. dates from the middle of the 3rd century and relates to the martyrdom of St Terinus, which took place in the city theatre during the persecution of Decius.
The most notable Christian monument re-emerged in the excavations is a baptistery with a circular plan (internal diameter 13.50 m). Its curvilinear interior arrangement was concealed externally by walls laid out according to a square, which defined secondary rooms with a mixed-line triangular plan. Two interior peristyles, each consisting of 8 granite columns reused from earlier structures, divided the interior space into concentric zones. Numerous masonry semicolumns were set against the inside of the circular wall, corresponding to the radial alignments of the columns.
Only a few capitals and several architraves can provide elements for an ideal reconstruction of the monument, which must have been roofed and equipped with windows and hypocausts. At the centre of the building is the basin for the rite of baptism by im-
mersion; externally, it has a circular perimeter, while internally it has a quadrilobate cruciform plan and is faced with marble.
The mosaic pavement, exceptionally well preserved in its rich polychromy and varied figurative zoomorphic decoration, belongs to the late imperial period (4th century). The white-ground mosaic 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 liveliness and often with wit.
Only at a later date (5th–6th century) were two mosaic panels symbolizing the Eucharist and Baptism set into the pavement along the route from the entrance door to the baptismal basin.
The first represents two peacocks facing one another toward the mystical vase, from which vine tendrils emerge, with doves feeding on their grapes; the other depicts two stags drinking from the spring; higher up, the triumphant cross, placed beneath a triumphal arch, is flanked by two palms.
In conclusion, the building does not seem to have been expressly constructed as a baptistery, but adapted for that purpose only in the 5th–6th century.
Other sacred buildings have been identified at B.: a Byzantine church on the summit of the hill, a medieval single-nave chapel, and a three-nave basilica with a Latin-cross plan, built in the Venetian period over the remains of a Byzantine trichora cella. Finally, a few ruins of a trichora church have appeared at the southern extremity of the plain situated at the foot of the hill.