26 August 2010 | The expansion of the road linking the southern Albanian town of Saranda to the Butrint archaeological park has stirred a row, with some local and international experts charging the government with poor management of the UNESCO world heritage site.

The 20-kilometre road, which was initially built in 1959, during the visit of the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, was narrow and presented a risk for motorists visiting the ancient Greek and Roman city.

However, the way that a local company contracted by the government has moved to expand the road, damaging the surrounding olive groves, has alarmed some archeologists.

While the authorities maintain that the damage done to the park scenery is minor, a group of experts from UNESCO are soon to visit Butrint to assess whether Tirana is honouring its obligations under the 1975 World Heritage Convention.

Butrinti is considered one the most significant Classical archeological sites in the Mediterranean. Dating back at least as far as the 10th century BC, it was, in turn, a Greek colony, a Roman city and a Byzantine bishopric before being deserted in the late Middle Ages, after which its magnificent buildings sank into the marshes.

Serious excavation the site only began in the late 1920s, under Italian auspices. Still largely unknown to the outside world before the fall of the Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha, the site now receives tens of thousands of visitors every year.

The site is managed by the Albanian authorities with the assistance of the London-based Butrint Foundation – until now often cited as example of fruitful collaboration between local and foreign expertise and money.

According to historian Auron Tare, the first director of the Buntrint Archeological Park, interventions in a UNESCO world heritage site must meet specific criteria, which does not seem to be the case with the new road.

“The construction of a highway of these proportions inside this area has no economic motive and destroys the park’s historical scenery,” said Tare.

The 2000-2005 management plan for the park envisioned the expansion of the old road only as far as the village of Ksamil, located only four kilometers North of Butrint itself. The rest of the track inside the protected area would only be repaved.

“The current project lacks a feasibility study and necessary consultation with the public has not been carried out,” Tare added.

In an op-ed in March, published in the Tirana daily Shekulli titled “Butrint 2013 - Trashed by Greed”, Professor Richard Hodges, former scientific director of the Butrint Foundation, condemned the new road unreservedly.

“Encouraged by the busloads of tourists, the Tirana authorities have driven a huge ugly road through the olives between Ksamil and Butrint, obliterating its magic,” Hodges wrote.

However, Ylli Cerova, until a few days ago director of the archeological park, defended the expansion on safety grounds. A bigger road would protect people visiting the site, which had seen too many accidents in the recent past.

“During the summer months thousands of tourists visit in buses, and every time two buses passed each other in the road there were problems,” Cerova said. “The narrow road, which was full of potholes, caused tragic accidents because of the traffic,” he added.

Brian Ayers, current director of the Butrint Foundation, which plays an advisory role in the management of the park, complained that the authorities had kept the proposal for the new road under wraps until construction started.

“When I did find out what was proposed, I wrote a long email to the Ministry [of Culture], pointing out Albania’s obligations under the World Heritage Convention and detailing the sort of procedures that ought to take place before any construction work went ahead,” he recalled.

“I asked the park director [Cerova] if he had been consulted about the road, if he had seen the plans for the road, if he had ‘asked’ to see the plans, and he said 'no' to all three,” Ayers added.

Contacted by Balkan Insight, officials from Albania’s Institute of Monuments and the Cultural Heritage Directorate in the Ministry of Culture said they could not comment until the UNESCO team, due soon in Tirana, had inspected the road works.

On August 14, the Minister of Culture, Ferdinand Xhaferri, fired Cerova as director with the justification that an inspection had found the park to be dirty.

Local media tied his dismissal also to complaints of financial mismanagement of the park, charges which Cerova has denied. Complaints over Cerova’s management of the park have also included allegations that after a theater festival in the summer part of Butrint’s Roman theatre were damaged.

According to Professor Hodges, the park management has failed to properly preserve the site, noting evidence of decay in the theater and broken lights in the museum.

His “j’accuse”-style open letter, set futuristically in 2013, ended on a pessimistic note, predicting that while time remained to reverse the damage, unfortunately that was unlikely to happen.

“This vandalism could have been stopped and the damage repaired even in March or April 2010; after that it was too late,” Hodges wrote. “Greed won; Albania and the world lost.”

Ben Andoni is deputy editor of MAPO magazine. This article is funded under the BICCED project, supported by the Swiss Cultural Programme, and is courtesy of Balkan Insight, the online publication of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, which contains analytical reports, in-depth analyses and investigations and news items from throughout the region covering major challenges of the political, social and economic transition in the Balkans..

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