Hadrianopolis

Getting there

car. Near Sofratikë in Dropull, south of Gjirokastër on the valley floor at about 211 m. It is a short detour off the road toward the Greek border at Kakavijë.

Parking: Beside the site.

Photography

Best light: golden, sunrise.

The cavea is the shape worth photographing and it needs low light across it to show the embankment it sits on. Check drone requirements with the AAC before travelling.

Drone: not confirmed. Albania's registration requirement is reported differently by every secondary source, so verify with the AAC before you fly.

Hadrianopolis sits on the floor of the Drino valley near Sofratikë, south of Gjirokastër. Under Hadrian, between 117 and 138 AD, the settlement already there was raised to the status of a city, and it is his name the place carries. Who founded the original settlement is not something this page will tell you, because the sources consulted do not say.

The theatre is the reason to turn off. Its cavea is 58 m across and was built up on a large artificial embankment rather than cut into a hillside, and it still stands several metres high. The baths you walk through today are third-century, replacing an earlier Hadrianic complex on the same ground, and a small temple and a circular structure are among the oldest things identified here.

It is a live dig. Teams from Macerata University, the Albanian Archaeological Institute and Oxford have worked here for more than a decade, so what is visible changes between seasons in a way that is true of almost nowhere else on this site. The Ministry lists it among the seven designated archaeological parks, under the name Andrianopol.

No fee and no opening hours are printed here because neither could be established from a source worth citing. Do not confuse this with Antigonea, twenty kilometres away in the same valley and also a designated park: the two names return each other in almost any search.