Saranda

Saranda is a city in the Republic of Albania and the seat of Saranda Municipality. Geographically, the city sits on an open bay of the Ionian Sea within the Mediterranean. It stretches along Albania’s Ionian coast, and enjoys a Mediterranean climate with more than 300 sunny days a year.

In antiquity, the city was known as Onchesmos and served as a port for Chaonia in ancient Epirus. Its modern name comes from the nearby Byzantine Monastery of the Forty Saints (Agioi Saranda), by which it became known from the late medieval period onward. Today, Saranda is known for the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean along its coast. Near Saranda lie the ruins of the ancient city of Butrint, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In recent years, Saranda has seen a steady rise in tourist numbers, with many arriving by cruise ship, drawn by its natural surroundings and archaeological sites. Saranda’s population is mostly ethnic Albanian, with a Greek minority community, making it one of two centres of the Greek minority in Albania.

History

Given the ancient features found in the city’s old Greek name and the names of surrounding sites, the area appears to have been part of an early Greek settlement zone in the late third to early second millennium BC. Bronze Age tools typical of Mycenaean Greece, dating to around 1400-1100 BC, have been found in Saranda. In antiquity the city was known as Onchesmos and served as a port town for Chaonia in ancient Epirus, opposite the northwestern tip of Corfu, and the next port along the coast south of Panormos. It was inhabited by the ancient Greek Chaonian tribe. Onchesmos flourished as the port for the Chaonian capital of Phoenice (modern Finiq). It appears to have been an important place in Cicero’s time, one of the regular departure points from Epirus to Italy – Cicero referred to favourable winds for that crossing as coming “from the Onchesmites.” According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the place’s true name was the Port of Anchises, named after Anchises, father of Aeneas. This tradition may be behind the shift of the name Onchesmus into the form Anchiasmus or Anchiasmos under the Byzantine Empire.

Saranda, under the name Onchesmos, is believed to be the site of Albania’s first synagogue, built in the 4th or 5th century. It is thought to have been built by descendants of Jewish captives who arrived on Albania’s southern coast around 70 AD, during the First Jewish-Roman War. The Onchesmos synagogue was replaced by a church in the 6th century. In 551 AD, the city was likely sacked by the Ostrogoths, later becoming a target for pirate raids from Gothic ships. A medieval document from 1191 shows the settlement had been abandoned, with its former name (Anchiasmos) no longer mentioned. From that year onward, the site took its name from the nearby Orthodox basilica of Agioi Saranda, built in the 6th century, about 1 km southeast of the modern city.