DURAZZO (Albanian Dürres). — An ancient Illyrian city (Dyrrachi), with an adjoining Greek Corinthian-Corfiot colony (Epidaunon), among the first conquered in Illyria (229 B.C.) by the Romans, who restored its original name (Dyrrachion) and made it their most important Adriatic port. Thus becoming a notable city of Greek-Latin language, it was the metropolis of the province of New Epirus (later the thema of Dyrrachion) from A.D. 314 onward. Almost never touched by the barbarians, under the Byzantines, the Angevins, the local dynasts (Topia), and the Venetians (1392–1501) it preserved its ancient splendor, which was then almost completely lost during the long Turkish domination (1501–1912). Capital of the Albanian state (1913–14), it is now the provincial capital.
There is reason to believe that Christianity took root in the province, and even more readily in the capital, from the first century onward. But from the fourth century onward its bishops, always metropolitans of a province dependent on the vicariate of Thessalonica and rich in suffragan sees, are frequently present in the documentation of the councils; there is evidence of a well-organized religious life and of numerous churches and monasteries. Although the city was bilingual, the liturgical language was Greek; but from the eleventh century an Italian colony with its own Latin clergy is attested, and in 1204 the succession of Latin archbishops begins, remaining uninterrupted from 1392 onward, while that of the Greek metropolitans continued as well. The network of suffragan sees was more extensive in the Greek province (Croia, Arbano, Scampa, Candavia, Licnido, Apollonia, Billide, Amantia, Aulona, etc.) than in the Latin one (Alessio, Croia, Arbano, Benda, Stefanense, Prisca), which was limited to the north and east of the metropolis; in addition, two sees (Alessio and Arbano) were claimed by Antivari. At present, with Alessio having passed to Scutari and the others suppressed, D. is a Latin archiepiscopal see without suffragans; as a see of the Greek rite, it is united to Tirana, aeguo iure, as head of the national autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church. D. did not remain as steadfast in orthodoxy as the other northern and central Albanian bishoprics, having experienced infiltrations of Acacianism (D. was the birthplace of the Emperor Anastasius), the schism of the Three Chapters, and iconoclasm, and later having constantly oscillated between Rome and Constantinople, with the Latin-rite community naturally tending toward the former and the Greek-rite community toward the latter. Its geographical position, therefore, together with its distinctive bilingualism and dual-rite character, makes D. and the province a true frontier region between East and West, whose history is among the most distinctive.