Text and photos of Roberto Di Diodato and Mary Poliafico
Fier, 100 kilometers south of Tirana, is the city closest to two archaeological and religious sites that still narrate, in vivid colors, the history of Albania: Ardenica and Apollonia. A story that not even the long years of the dark communist regime, which had proclaimed state atheism, were able to abandon.
The sacred silence of the monastery of Ardenica
15 kilometers north of Fier, on top of a hill that rises isolated on the plain between the greenery of a forest, resists Ardènica, an ancient Orthodox monastery founded in 1282 near the Via Egnazia: a long and important Roman road which, towards the east, reached Constantinople and in the west ideally touched the coasts of southern Italy to join the Via Appia. The sacred place is an alleged citadel inside a mighty wall. A somewhat disconnected staircase leads to a robust wooden door. Spalanched, it lets a white bell tower appear and the arches on the run of a stone basilica. And immediately you enter a cloistered silence. Broken only by the smiles of flower bushes.
Between frescoes and incense: the splendor of the Church
Today the church of the monastery, dedicated to Santa Maria, has crowded with faithful, all in an attitude collected. Women with the veil on the head. A Pope is celebrating the baptism of a newborn in a small classroom located beyond the central nave.
Only when people leave the Church, can you finally admire the frescoes that cover the walls and golden images of the splendid iconostasis, made in 1744 by the famous artist Kostantin Shpataraku. The wall paintings, the work of two paintings, Kostandin and Athanas Zografi, talented interpreters of the Albanian post-bizine art, represent scenes from the ancient and the New Testament, including the struggle of the Archangel Michael against the dragon of the Apocalypse and the “dormitation” of Mary. The two brothers also decorated the narthex of the church of Santa Maria with a powerful fresco of the universal judgment: the angels are rewinding the whole celestial vault, moon Sun Star, as if it were a carpet that no longer serves, because the time of man and the universe is over. Now there is only the eternity of God.
The whole Church smells of incense and antiquity. The colors of the galvanized brothers have lost some of their brilliance under the wear of the centuries, the insults of man and the fumes of the candles. The silvery and golden reflections of the lamps are wonderful. The oval pulpit is unique and unrepeatable, laid like a crochet lace.
Skanderbeg and the patriotic memory
It is thought that Ardènica began around the oldest nucleus of the chapel of the Holy Trinity, whose origins date back to the 10th century. Several times restored, the church is still a small but important monument of Albania’s political history. Among his walls in 1451 the solemn marriage was celebrated between the national hero Gjergj Kastrioti, called Skënderbeu, and Andronika Arianiti-Commenda, daughter of Prince Gjergj Arianiti Comneni. For his strenuous and victorious opposition to the threat of the Turkish-Ottoman Empire, the famous Albanian patriot and leader was awarded the title of “Defensor Fidei” by the Pope of Rome, Callisto III.
Once the complex of the Ardènica monastery was fierce of industriousness. A large community of monks lived in the shelter of its walls dividing the time between work, study and prayer. He had been the seat of the seminar for the formation of the Orthodox Pope, a place of conservation and teaching of the Albanian language, home to a large library full of thirty thousand volumes (destroyed in 1932) and also a Pinacoteca di Preziosity of the eighteenth -century Renaissance of the small Balkan nation. A careful restoration work has made it possible to maintain most of the buildings and tools at the service of daily community life in their original form, such as the cells, kitchens, reception rooms, stables, oven, oil mill and mill. The traveler who on September 8 was passing through this sacred place would find the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary in progress, to which the main church is dedicated.
In the days of tersi skies, from the top of the hill, the gaze discovers the blue of the karavasta lagoon that opens on the Adriatic between sand strips, cultivated fields, canals and pine forests. Paradise of biodiversity, inhabited by a subsidious and rare master, the Riccio Pellicano. Naturalistic treasure set among the wonders of Albania, it is a precious protected area, where migratory birds stop before resuming the journey to Africa.
Only two monks today make the Monastery of Ardènica survive with their discreet presence. A custodian of few words but of great kindness, aware of his role, opens and closes the entrance door on this abyss of beauty and spirituality.
Apollonia, the ancient city of Apollo and Augustus
A handful of kilometers south of Fier, to as many from the Adriatic Sea, Cologne first Greek and then Urs Romana, Apollonia was in antiquity a splendid city founded around 620 BC by the inhabitants of Corinth on a hilly territory view of the sea, at the mouth of the Aoos river, today Vjosë. A grandiose port, which could protect up to a hundred ships, gave it an exceptionally flourishing economic condition and a considerable political relevance, made certain by the prerogative of beating money. The city, thanks also to its position as a bridge between Athens and Rome, soon became the cultural center of a renowned school of rhetoric and liberal arts. Julius Caesar sent the young Augustus, his adopted son and future emperor to Apollonia, to study under the guidance of Apollodoro di Pergamo and other masters of philosophy, perhaps also to keep him away from dangerous power games and with little “healthy” climate that was breathed in those years in Rome in those years.
For several centuries Apollonia, a “sacred” city in Apollo, god of the sun, poetry and music, had had to struggle to shake off his illicious origins and keep the presence of still uncivilized populations on the margins. The writer Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis Historia, left written: “Apollonia … four miles from the sea … in his borders live atmanti and Bellioni, barbaric peoples …”; Among the city monuments he remembers only the “famous nymphaeum”, a source and public fountain dedicated to nymphs, divinities of waters and nature.
But archaeological research has brought to light a vast Greek-Roman city, which has nothing to envy to the classic architectures of many other urban centers that bear the same name, scattered throughout the Mediterranean area. In one of his Philipics, Marco Tullio Cicero leaves a lapidary definition of Apollonia: “Magna Urs et Gravis”, a large and important city.
The Prati Prati Verdi plateau
Apollonia is a real archaeological park with obvious traces of temples, villas, private homes, public monuments, arcades, squares and spa. Some vestiges should be discovered with the help of a guide. Others tear the applause.
The hilly plateau on which he laid out today of green meadows today. A silent nature, pacified with one’s past, is shaded here and there by trees and plants of olive trees. The feeling of entering a sacred fence to the gods is alive, which seem to be wandering still among these flounces. The facade of the bouler, home of the city parliament, supported by six columns as if it were a Roman temple, is the rest of the archaeological that welcomes the visitor, a symbol of beauty without sunset of Apollonia. It is also known as a monument to agonothetes, that is, the two brothers who promoted the construction, mentioned in an inscription on the architrave. It is an icon of Albania today. Not far away, the preserved remains of the Odeon, a small Hellenistic theater used for singing representations, musical executions, performances of poems and other cultural or political events; enlarged by the Romans, it came to contain up to 7,000 spectators.
Apollonia was defended by a circle of 4 kilometers long walls, which surrounded an area of 137 hectares. During the peak of its wealth, it counted over 50,000 inhabitants. It grew prosperous, until a devastating earthquake in 324 AD did not destroy the almost all of the buildings, including the port and deviating the course of the Aoos river. From there on, slowly the decline and abandonment for the city “Magna et gravis” saw Cicero were the level.
Much of the artistic heritage of the Illyrian metropolis has been saved and preserved in the magnificent museum, which is located inside the perimeter and within the walls of a Byzantine monastery, as if to put it under the protection of the Virgin Mary, to which the nearby conventual church built in the century is dedicated. XIII. The visual effect that produces the entire architectural complex through the merger of the ancient construction technique with the Byzantine one is stunned. Here the story made stone.
During the years of anarchy that followed the collapse of the communist regime, the museum collection was sacked and the archaeological site plundered by wicked tombaroli, which sold many “precious pieces” to collectors and unscrupulous merchants. Today the museum consists of three elements: the six rooms of the archaeological collection, containing finds from prehistory to the late Roman era; the statuary porch, which houses large marble sculptures; and the refectory, which contains in situ frescoes, archaeological remains and a colorful pavement mosaic whose figurative reasons are taken by mythology and the marine environment.
