Part 4 - Roman Influences

The other interesting thing I saw was the obvious influence of the Romans on the country of Albania. During our travels between Durres and Vlora, I saw several remnants of roman-like aqueducts. The were usually in pieces, sometimes arriving from out of the side of a hill, or disappearing into a heap of something. They were all crumbling, and in major disrepair. On the sides of them, they had been tagged with corporate graffiti. These corporate 'tags' consisted of spray painted company logos (usually from a stencil it looked like) on the sides of bridge overpasses, aqueducts, highway dividers, etc.

I also stumbled across an old amphitheater in the heart of Durres. It was obviously some sort of excavation, as it was fenced off, and it looked like a particular university was actually undergoing the exploration of the remains. It was of course, in major disrepair, but it was easy to see the scope and grandeur of such a place. There were several places that you could see remains of columns, or a piece of an old building, crumbling, and disappearing into the past.

It is only in recent history that Albania has started to preserve these pieces of history, so there is much that is lost, but on the plus side, they are doing more now to preserve what they do have, and what they continue to unearth.