Ital Coop Albania — a register of the Adriatic crossing

The Strait · A.1

The Strait of Otranto

The narrowest crossing, why it has carried traffic for millennia, and what a channel this width does to two coasts that can see each other.

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A.1Seventy-two kilometres at the narrowest, and no island in between to shelter a boat caught mid-crossing. The measure runs between the two nearest points of coast.Drawn by Ital Coop Albania from projected coordinates

The Strait · A.2

The crossing

What actually moved — grain, salt, timber, people — and the seasons that governed when a small boat could attempt it.

The Ancient Shore · B.1

Butrint

A Greek then Roman then Venetian site on a channel between lake and sea, with each period building on the last and the water slowly taking it back.

The register

Twenty-nine entries, eight sections

Every entry is a named place, located, dated by period rather than year, and described as built fabric.

A low rocky shoreline running out to a headland in flat evening light — A.3The Albanian shore south of Vlorë. On a clear winter day the mountains behind this coast are visible from Puglia, which is how pilots found their landfall long before instruments — see Two shores, one weather.Photo: Gutjahr Aleksandr / Pexels

Section through the Otranto channelVertical exaggeration ×40

The channel is shallow by Mediterranean standards. The sill between Karaburun and the heel of Italy holds the Adriatic's water at a depth a Roman hull could sound, which is part of why the crossing was made so early and so often.

Fourteen of the register's entries at true position, from Rozafa on the Buna to Piana degli Albanesi west of Palermo.

The corridor

Two coasts that can see each other

On clear winter days the Ceraunian mountains are visible from Puglia. Everything in this register sits on one shore or the other, and most of it was built by people who knew what was on the far side.

The full register

The eight sections

AThe Strait4 entriesForty miles, and what crossed them.BThe Ancient Shore4 entriesGreek and Roman ground on the eastern side.CThe Via Egnatia3 entriesThe road that started at the water.DTowers of the Coast4 entriesVenetian and Ottoman work on the shoreline.EBazaar Towns4 entriesStone towns stacked inland.FStone Houses of the North3 entriesThe tower-house and the valley it stands in.GThe Lagoons3 entriesWhere the land stops being land.HArbëresh4 entriesAlbanian-speaking villages in southern Italy, five centuries on.

Stacked slate roofs of a hillside town in flat morning light — E.1Gjirokastër. Slate is laid in diminishing courses, and the roof structure has to be built for the weight before the stone goes on.Photo: Gjirokastёr - roofs · Wikimedia Commons

Section H · Arbëresh

Fifty towns in the south of Italy speak a language that left the far shore five hundred years ago.

The settlements date mostly from the decades after 1468, when the Ottoman advance through the Albanian lands sent families across the water in waves. Naples granted land; the villages went up on poor ground in the Pollino, the Crati valley and the hills west of Palermo. Most follow the Byzantine rite under the eparchies of Lungro and Piana degli Albanesi.

The whole section

Two adults talking on a village street in southern Italy — HAn Arbëresh street in the south of Italy. These are working municipalities with councils and schools, not preserved settlements.Photo: Huy Phan / Pexels

H.1Lungro and the EparchyAn Italo-Albanian eparchy keeping the Byzantine rite in Calabria, five centuries after the settlement that created it.H.2Piana degli AlbanesiA Sicilian town founded by Albanian settlers, with bilingual street lettering and its own liturgical calendar.H.4The languageA form of Albanian that separated before the modern standard existed, which is why it preserves what the homeland changed.