When some folks hear the word "history", they yawn and let their minds drift to other matters.
If that's you, no offense will be taken if you click on over to something more current.
But if you're like me, a part of your imagination enjoys little daydreams that wander back through time, entertaining ideas of what life was like in earlier days. I grew up reading historical fiction, visiting museums, and touring old homes. But having grown up in America, the oldest historical site I remember visiting was Dickson Mounds, a native American burial site not far from my central Illinois home.
Living in Albania, we are surrounded by significantly older history. There are castle ruins less than an hour's drive from us that have been built on foundations which pre-date the life of Christ. As we have spent more and more time here, we continue to add to our knowledge base of the history of the region. You can imagine my excitement when we learned that the Roman road that connected Istanbul to Rome itself meandered through Greece, via Thessaloniki, up into Albania, through Elbasan and eventually ending at the shores of the Adriatic in the port city of Durres where sojourners would have caught a boat to the shores of Italy.
We live 15 kilometers from Durres.
Given the likelihood that folks we've read about in the New Testament have traversed this road (in Albania it is called the Rruga Ignatia), we cannot NOT take visitors to see some of these places that are just minutes from our village home.
When devising the itinerary for Steve and the boys, we set aside some time on the schedule today to take them to one of the premier sites of historical significance in this region: the Durres Amphitheater (the largest in the Balkans). I actually stayed home with Ellie and Reni to work on laundry and cooking, but the bonus was that it freed up space to take along one of Steven's new friends from the men's retreat, Sherif! The following photos are from Steve's camera...
Covered by sea silt after an earthquake generated a tsunami several hundred years ago, it was rediscovered in the 1960s (hence modern buildings still standing over a portion of the elipse).
Nathan explains how this portion was used as a church after the fall of the Roman Empire...
Historians believe the seats of the theater were lined with gleaming white marble, which was stripped from the site after it was no longer in use for entertainment purposes.
A series of tunnels under the seats resembles many a modern day American baseball park or stadium ...
Everyone returned home for lunch, then after a few rounds of volleyball the village boys took everyone on a hike up into the hills above the village.
Testing rock climbing/sliding/balancing/agility skills.
Off tomorrow to visit Elbasan and see the kids and staff at Reni's former orphanage, then off to visit some missionaries and see their work in the Roma (gypsy) community there before returning for evening church!
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