DURAZZO (Albanian *Dürres*). - An ancient Illyrian city (*Dyrrachii*), with an attached Corinthian-Corcyraean Greek colony (*Epidamnon*), was among the first in Illyria to be conquered by the Romans in 229 BC. They restored it to its original name (*Dyrrachion*) and made it their most important Adriatic port. Thus becoming a notable Greco-Latin city, it was the metropolis of the province of New Epirus (later the *thema* of *Dyrrachion*) from AD 314 onwards. Rarely touched by barbarians, it maintained its ancient splendor under the Byzantines, the Angevins, local dynasties (Topia), and the Venetians (1392–1501), though this splendor was almost entirely lost during the long Turkish domination (1501–1912). It was the capital of the Albanian state (1913–14) and is now a provincial capital.
There is good reason to believe that Christianity took root in the province, and even more readily in the capital, as early as the 1st century. From the 4th century onward, its bishops—always metropolitans of a province dependent on the vicariate of Thessalonica and rich in suffragans—are frequently attested in conciliar records. There is evidence of a well-organized religious life and numerous churches and monasteries. Although the city was bilingual, the liturgical language was Greek; however, from the 11th century an Italian colony with its own Latin clergy was present, and from 1204 onward a series of Latin archbishops begins, uninterrupted from 1392 onward, even as the Greek metropolitans continued. The network of suffragans of the Greek province was far larger (Croia, Arbano, Scampa, Candavia, Licinio, Apollonia, Billide, Amantia, Aulona, etc.) than that of the Latin province (Alessio, Croia, Arbano, Benda, Stefanese, Prisca), which was confined to the north and east of the metropolis and included two sees (Alessio and Arbano) claimed by Antivari. Now, after Alessio passed to Scutari and the others were suppressed, Durazzo is the see of a Latin archbishopric without suffragans; as the see of the Greek rite, it is united *aequo iure* with Tirana as the head of the autocephalous national Orthodox Church of Albania. Durazzo was not as steadfast in Orthodoxy as the other northern and central Albanian bishoprics, having been affected by Acacianism (Durazzo was the birthplace of Emperor Anastasius), the Three Chapters schism, Iconoclasm, and later always wavering between Rome and Constantinople, with the Latin-rite community naturally inclining toward the former and the Greek-rite community toward the latter. Thus, its geographical position and its singular bilingualism and dual rite make Durazzo and its province a veritable borderland between East and West, whose history is among the most distinctive.