Tuesday 4th June 2024 – Ioannina, Greece

 

We wanted to visit one last site before we left Albania. Antigonia lies just a 30 minute drive up in the hills on the other side of the Drino River. It was an easy journey on reasonable roads and we parked up in the car park where the only other vehicle was the guardian’s car. From the entrance we took a narrow path, a bit of a scramble in places, to the acropolis where there were the remains of a church built of the ancient stone. The path then brought us down past a spring to the ruins of a couple of buildings and remains of a fountain. There were information boards but many were faded to the point of being almost indecipherable and, annoyingly, they tended to be very general, not telling you about what you were looking at. Apparently, the site has been extensively excavated but is poorly explained. There was no information about the acropolis, nothing about the spring or the other buildings.
We thought that it would be a short visit to the site, but we hadn’t realised how extensive it was. We were now back on the main track and we walked a long way to the other end of the site where the agora and main buildings were located. On the way we passed the Leatherworker’s House and the Coachman’s house but there was very little information about them. The Agora was more impressive, especially when a shepherd came through with his flock. There were the scant remains of a two-storey stoa, some posh houses and a church. Here also was a ‘mini museum’ that the guardian had told me was open – it wasn’t. This was actually understandable as the only finds were sherds of pottery and stone carvings open on tables and it couldn’t be left unlocked without someone overseeing it.
Jane decided to take a slow walk back (it was hot!) but I wanted to see the far end of the site where the map had shown that there may be some of the walls in position. All of the walls on the rest of the site seem to have been robbed out. A small sign from the agora read ‘Artisan Quarter’, so I followed it and found remains of many buildings either side of an unexcavated road. I would really have liked to know more about them but there was no information board. On then to the walls and a gate destroyed by the Romans – the result of the destruction was quite clear but it was still possible to see the door pivots on either side of the gate. The Romans also reduced the height of the walls to reduce the chance of future threat from the inhabitants but good sections of the wall still exist. I was about to make my way back when I noticed another small sign simply stating ‘Mosaic’. Intrigued, I had to follow it and found myself in the southernmost corner of the site, with steep cliffs on three sides and a commanding view over the countryside. Here in 5^th – 6^th century AD, centuries after Antigonia’s destruction by fire, a church was built, surely on the site of an ancient temple. Here parts of a rather dusty polychrome mosaic were visible. I walked quickly back to the van and was pleased to see that Jane had opened very window in the van to reduce the heat.
We retraced our route to Gjirokaster and headed for the Greek border a short distance away. Crossing the border was a simple and quick procedure and were back in Greece. For lunch, we stopped at the pretty Lake Zaravina, site of a music festival in the summer.
It didn’t take us long to drive to Ioannina and the campsite that we had stayed at earlier in the sojourn. When we there at Greek Easter, the rowing club were about to leave for Athens where they were competing in the Greek championships. The campsite manager is a really pleasant man, all smiles, and his is also very involved with and proud of the rowing club. I asked him how the club had done and he said that they were the Greek champions (again!) and came back with a whole bunch of gold medals. Today they also welcomed back a team that had been at some European championships in Poland and they also returned with gold medals. It was great to see lots of rowers out on the lake once again.
We finished the day with a good meal out at the restaurant next to the rowing club, entertained by the large number of geese some of whom were looking interested in what we were eating.
Photos: One of the posh houses in the Antigonia agora; The southern gate destroyed by the Romans; The church at the southernmost point of the site; Lake Zaravina; Rowers under instruction at Ioannina.