I luoghi della vita politica e amministrativa nelle città dell’Epiro

Nowadays, within the studies devoted to the public spaces and buildings in the urban centres of Late Classical and Hellenistic Epirus, a contribution thoroughly investigating the architecture of political and civil character in both its singularity and in its connections to the urban and regional context is still lacking. This contribution tries to fill this gap through a contextual approach focusing on the agorai and the buildings fulfilling an administrative and political function in eight major cities of nowadays southern Albania and north-western Greece. First of all, this research allows to identify the functions and the architectural forms of the political and administrative spaces and their development from the genesis of Epirote urban culture during the 4th century to the end of the 1st century BC, with reference to the architectural and urban models spread in the Mediterranean basin from the end of the Classical period. Secondly, the study has the merit of providing further useful elements to understand the institutional and administrative frame of the urban centres of the region on the one hand, and their role within the ethnic and tribal groups and the Epirote federal state on the other.