Illyria, Rome and Byzantium
From the Illyrians to Byzantium: two millennia in which Albania learned to survive borders.
Albania's history is not a succession of its own kingdoms: it is a history of borders, of peoples passing through, and of a language that survived them all. Understanding it is not an academic luxury — without it, Berat, Gjirokastra or Hoxha's bunkers stay in the realm of curiosity. With it, the country falls into place.
This section opens the history at its oldest end: the centuries before anything called “Albania” existed. If any of the chapters feels long, you can skip it and come back later: they’re written so that each can be read on its own when a specific city sends you back to it.
The Illyrians and what we don’t know
Before Albania, the Illyrians. A cluster of Indo-European tribes that occupied the western Balkans from around the 2nd century BC until Romanisation. They left fortifications, remarkable grave goods (the Archaeological Museum in Tirana has the best) and, probably, the root of today’s Albanian — though linguistics hasn’t been able to prove it definitively.
The Illyrian-Albanian hypothesis in detail
Albanian belongs to its own branch of Indo-European, with no close relatives. The two strongest theories about its origin are: (1) that it descends directly from Illyrian, the traditional hypothesis and the one assumed by Albanian nationalism from the 19th century onwards; (2) that it descends from Thracian or Dacian, languages of more eastern peoples. Written evidence is minimal — Illyrian is known almost entirely from place names and personal names — and definitive proof will never come. For travellers it's enough to know that the language is ancient, indigenous and singular.
Queen Teuta, who took on Rome from Shkodra in the 3rd century BC, remains a symbol: a woman leading a tribal coalition able to rattle the Republic. She lost, and with her defeat the long Roman chapter began.
Rome and Dyrrachium
Between 229 BC and the 5th century AD, what is now Albania was part of the Roman world. Durrës, then Dyrrachium, became one of the Empire’s most important ports: the Adriatic end of the Via Egnatia, the great road that linked Rome with Constantinople through Macedonia and Thrace. The amphitheatre still poking out between blocks of flats — the largest in the Balkans — is the most visible trace of that time.
Romanisation also left Christianity: St Paul preached in Illyricum, and the faith took root early. When the Empire split in AD 395, the Theodosian line cut through Albania: the north stayed under Rome, the south under Constantinople. That border — which today roughly matches the distinction between Catholics in the north and Orthodox in the south — was drawn 1,600 years ago and is still there.
Byzantium, Slavs, Byzantium again
The following centuries are turbulent. Slavs arrive in the 7th century, pushing part of the Illyrian population into the mountains and assimilating in part. Byzantium recovers, loses, recovers. The Bulgarians turn up in the 9th century, the Serbian empire in the 14th. Through all that, Albanian — that isolated linguistic branch — survives by retreating into the northern mountains.
Around the 12th century “the Albanians” start to be mentioned as an identifiable people, with their own feudal lords and their own customs. The region is called Arbëria and its inhabitants arbëreshë — whence the Italianisms “Albania” and “albanese” that would eventually prevail.