Malathrea and Çiflik Church

South of the villages of Xarra and of Mursia with its glimmering artificial lake, on the raised lower slopes of Mount Milë, is a ruined Hellenistic fortified villa. The villa is square with a central courtyard and portico with ranges of rooms behind, and an entrance on the western side. The fortified aspect is clearly visible in the outer wall of large rectangular blocks and large square towers at each corner The original construction has been dated to the 3rd century BC, with modifications made in the Roman period when the villa was reused and a new range of rooms were added on the northern side on the outer face of the wall.

Most of the rooms seem to have been used for storage of oil and grain, and the impressive views of valley that it commands suggest a control and cultivation of the fertile local landscape. A number of fortified Hellenistic villa-sites have been identified in Epirus and this building was undoubtedly part of a rich Epirote estate.

The name Malathrea is a rather recent attribution, based on an association with the malathreum – probably a garden nymphaeum feature – in the villa of Titus Pomponius Atticus. Though the villa of Atticus near Butrint has never been located, this particular villa appears too small and rustic, and lacking in late Republican amenities to qualify.

Further south the ruins of a 13th-century Byzantine church can be found, the so-called Çiflik church. Constructed on a slight elevation of the plain, the church sits at the point where the river Pavllas emerges into the Plain south of Butrint.

The church had a nave and two flanking aisles, separated with a combination of masonry piers and reused Roman columns; an inscribed column can still be seen lying within the nave. Still standing is the east end of the church with its two apses pierced by windows: one a three-sided polygonal apse with semicircular interior, the other a smaller semicircular apse. A section of the narrow vaulted narthex façade also survives, forming the entrance hall to the nave itself.

Particularly impressive is the decorative patterned brickwork with which the apse wall is ornamented. This and the architecture of the church is typical of the 13th-century Epirote Despotate (a sub-Byzantine state) – a period that marked a rich ecclesiastical revival at Butrint and in this area of Albania in general. The church remains now form part of a farm.

 

• Landscape and monuments around Butrint
• The Landscape
• Korafi Hills and Cape Stillo
• QTVR of Cape Stillo
• Malathrea and Çiflik Church
• Çuka e Aitoit and Mount Milë
• North of Butrint

Vagalat
The most impressive of the fortified sites in the area is at Vagalat on the slopes of Mount Milë. The site overlooks the Pavllas River as it crosses into the plain south of Butrint, controlling the mountain pass. The fortifications consist of a single large, well-constructed tower and a stretch of wall some 26 m long. It appears to be a watchtower constructed in the Hellenistic period, undoubtedly to control the passage between the territories of the Epirote tribes.