the plan to makeButhrotum a veterans' colony. New residents expanded the city and the construction included an aqueduct, a Roman bath, houses, a forum complex, and a nymphaeum. During that era the size of the town was doubled.
In the 3rd century AD, an earthquake destroyed a large part of the town, leveling buildings in the suburbs on the Vrina Plain and in the forum of the city centre. Excavations have revealed that city had already been in decline. However, the settlement survived into the late antique era, becoming a major port in the province of Old Epirus. The town of late antiquity included the grand Triconch Palace, the house of a major local notable that was built around 425.
In the early 6th century, Buthrotum became the seat of a bishop and new construction included a large baptistry, one of the largest such Paleochristian buildings of its type, and a basilica. The walls of the city were extensively rebuilt, most probably at the end of the 5th century, perhaps by Emperor Anastasius. The Ostrogoths under Indulf raided the Ionian coast in 550 and may have attacked Buthrotum. Evidence from the excavations shows that importation of commodities, wine and oil from the Eastern Mediterranean continued into the early years of the 7th century when the early Byzantine Empire lost these provinces. In this, it follows the historical pattern seen in other Balkan cities, with the 6th to 7th century being a watershed for the transformation of the Roman world into the Early Middle Ages.
By the 7th century, following the model of classical cities throughout the Mediterranean, Buthrotum had shrunk to a much smaller fortified post and with the collapse of Roman power was briefly controlled by First Bulgarian Empire before being regained by the Byzantine Empire in the 9th century.
Medieval and Venetian Period
It remained an outpost of the empire fending off assaults from the Normans until 1204 when
