The Tower Gate

The impressive remains of the Tower Gate lie at the head of a paved roadway that brought visitors into the ancient city from the bridge and landing stage crossing the Vivari Channel.

Originally this was probably a fairly open thoroughfare, to provide a clear approach and to permit the traveller entering the city to absorb the full effect of this two-storied stone-built gate. As the city grew the road became choked with buildings: a nymphaeum, baths, the aqueduct and later the Great Basilica. Despite being partly buried amongst these later buildings the gate was left in position, even after the old city walls had become disused, and must have continued to act as a monumental and formal entrance into the legal and sacred area of the city.

The gate was substantial, with twin portals separated by a central square tower. To the side of the eastern portal stood a projecting round-ended tower. Both of these were constructed with finely cut rectangular blocks with the typical rusticated surfaces to be seen on the circuit walls elsewhere in Butrint.

The large eastern rounded-ended tower contained two rooms with a doorway in the northern wall of the tower permitting access to the interior. Corbelled arches over the doorways, and upright monolithic stone piers in each room, point to the existence of a corbelled vault sustaining an upper floor. The tower was probably only two stories high, and perhaps capped by a parapet or a pitched roof.

The projection of the tower beyond the line of the wall is in origin a defensive measure, permitting defenders to enfilade any attackers approaching the gate. A series of squint windows in the walls look out to the east and west, along the wall line and into the gateway. There are no records of Butrint ever having been attacked in this fashion, but the walls and gates would equally have served as a status symbol for the city.

The dating of the gate is uncertain as it relies completely on the style of the masonry. Normally this would place it within the 4th to 3rd centuries BC. The line of the wall to the west, however, might be dated to the 1st century BC or later from the reused inscriptions found in the (now demolished) Tower of Inscriptions. Certainly the style and masonry technique used on the gate can be paralleled from other city dates and walls all over the Hellenistic world.

 

• Gateway to Butrint
• The Tower Gate
• The Nymphaeum
• The Water Gate
• The Hellenistic Gate
• The Roman Gate
• The Medieval Gate