Butrint was abandoned three times — by Romans after malaria emptied the marshes, by Byzantines when Slavic raids made the coast untenable, by Venetians when silting closed the harbour — and each departure left a stratum. The theatre is Greek, its limestone benches quarried in the fourth century BC when Butrint served as a waypoint between Corinth and the Adriatic colonies. The baptistery floor is Roman, its peacock mosaic intact beneath a protective canopy installed by Luigi Maria Ugolini, the Italian archaeologist who excavated the site between 1928 and 1936 under Mussolini's Albanian protectorate. The basilica is Byzantine, its apse cracked open by tree roots that pushed through the mortar over eight centuries of disuse. UNESCO listed Butrint in 1992, three years before the Pyramid scheme riots that nearly destroyed Albania's post-communist transition, and the site has remained a bellwether for the country's archaeological ambitions ever since. A day trip to Saranda and Butrint National Park from Corfu compresses two nations and twenty-four centuries into a single itinerary. The hydrofoil crossing from Corfu Town takes seventy-five minutes, cutting southeast across the Ionian past the silhouette of Paxos and the mouth of the Vivari Channel. Saranda's seafront — concrete balconies stacked six storeys high, cafés under striped awnings — reflects the rapid expansion that followed Albania's 1991 border opening, when the town's population tripled in a decade. Most tours allocate ninety minutes here before continuing twelve kilometres south to Butrint, a drive that follows the coastal road past olive groves and the turquoise shallows of Ksamil. Butrint itself occupies eighteen hectares of forested headland where Lake Butrint meets the Vivari Channel. The site's layering is literal: Greek walls underpin Roman baths, Christian mosaics pave pagan sanctuaries, Venetian fortifications crown Hellenistic acropolis stones. The Lion Gate, carved in the fourth century BC, still bears chisel marks. The Great Basilica's floor mosaic, completed around AD 550, depicts a peacock flanked by geometric borders and fragments of Latin dedicatory inscriptions. The theatre, semi-circular and cut into the hillside, seated twenty-five hundred spectators and retains its original orchestra floor. Ali Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Ioannina, fortified the triangular castle at the summit in 1807, adding crenellated walls that command views over the lagoon and, on clear afternoons, the southern tip of Corfu. The site opens at 08:30; most combined Saranda and Butrint tours from Corfu arrive between 11:00 and 12:30, when midday heat compresses the limestone pathways. Entrance for foreign nationals costs 1,000 Albanian lekë, roughly eight euros, collected at the gate below the museum building. The conservation fee supports ongoing stabilisation work, including the 2018 reinforcement of the baptistery's mosaic floor and the drainage system that now channels winter runoff away from the basilica's foundations. Butrint's remoteness — two hours from Tirana, three from the Greek border at Kakavijë — has preserved it from the resort development that reshaped much of Albania's southern coast, leaving the wetlands around the site a nesting ground for Dalmatian pelicans and the European otter.