Françoise Poqueville

Françoise Pouqueville was the French counterpart to William Martin Leake. For six years the two men were great rivals – both in their political and diplomatic capacities, and in their antiquarian interests.

Like Leake, Pouqueville had been to Egypt but on leaving had been captured by pirates. Imprisoned, first in Tripoli then in Constantinople, he took the opportunity to learn ancient Greek. On his release he was dispatched by the Napoleonic government to Epirus as its consul general.

In 1805 Pouqueville, like Leake, visited Butrint. Here Pouqueville’s antiquarian interests, as much as his political efforts, clashed with those of the Brit and he made copious notes on the archaeological landscape he encountered. He described Butrint thus:

… on the south side of the channel, communicating between that lake and the sea, is constructed the modern Venetian fortress of Buthrinto, and on the opposite side are the ruins of old Buthrotum. These ruins show an acropolis or citadel, and the Roman town enclosed within a double wall, containing fragments of both Greek and Roman architecture. But, in the walls of the acropolis are preserved foundations of the highest antiquity, consisting of vast blocks without cement. Between the hill Megalongi and the mouth of the Simoïs is the road-stead of Geroviglia … nearly two English miles broad and long … cut asunder in the middle by a barrier of strong reeds, to enclose the fishing grounds, leased out yearly together with the lake and customs.

The topographical description of Butrint is similar in approach to that of Leake, and the change in the occupation and use of the site that this account highlights is telling. As, indeed, are the details that he includes of the practical and economic arrangement for the fisheries – confirming the information in the Venetian archives. Interesting is also the greater attention to archaeological detail displayed in Pouqueville’s account, not the least the investigation of monuments of different date. In this he follows closely the tradition for first-hand observation established by Cyriacus of Ancona, confirming this approach for future visitors to Butrint and the sites of antiquity in general.