1. ENTRANCE
The ancient city of Gitana is located just a short distance from Greece’s border with Albania, in the north-east corner of Thesprotia. The city was built atop a naturally defensible low-lying plateau at the south-western edge of the elongated Vrysella heights next to the bed of the river Kalamas. It was protected on three sides by the natural bends in the river and by the heights on the fourth side.
Current research places the founding of Gitana somewhere in the mid-4th c. B.C.
The settlement was constructed according to an organised urban plan and was protected by strong circuit walls. Its streets were straight, intersecting at perpendiculars to form elongated rectangular urban blocks. Depending on length, each of these blocks could fit two or more structures, while larger structures, whether for public or private use, could even occupy an entire block.
The theatre was erected beyond the walls, while public structures, such as the Prytaneion – Archive, the Agora, the temple of Apollo Agyieus and the sanctuaries of Themis and the Parthenos, were all located in the western section of the city.
Excavations at the city’s Prytaneion – Archive, located in the south-western section of the settlement, brought to light roughly 3,000 clay seals, two of which bear the inscription “ΓΙΤΑΝΑ”. In the wake of this discovery, the name “ΓΙΤΑΝΑ” was thought to be the singular of the hypothesised Doric name “Γιτάνη”, similarly to “Τιτάνη”, a view that became established in research.
However, the debate surrounding the city’s name was finally put to rest thanks to a copper dedicatory inscription uncovered in the small, two-chambered temple in the western section of the settlement. The inscription clearly states ΕΝ ΓΙΤΑΝΟΙΣ, in the plural, confirming the name that ancient historians gave to the city. The recent reading of the temple’s dedicatory inscription confirmed Livy’s and Polybius’ references to the name, in the neutral, of Gitana.
AUDIO TOUR
