Ports, castles and ruins: A narrative for the cultural landscape of Ulcinj and Shkodra

Abstract

[EN] Both into the other parts of the Mediterranean Sea and but also further inside the mainland. Ulcinj’s highly prominent role in the maritime heritage of the Mediterranean, both as a port and later a fortified castle, has been studied and well documented. However, its relationship with the mainland is, for the lack of a better word, bland of a creative understanding of its potential as a cultural landscape. This paper therefore, aims to study this relationship with a focus on Ulcinj and its surrounding mainland in an attempt to narrate a landscape story that is anchored within the archaeological materiality and the natural elements in a progressively developing system, with the Buna River acting as its backbone. The connection of Ulcinj and Shkodra through the Buna River is an important segment not only as a historical trade route but also as a progressive envelopment of a rich cultural landscape. From Ulcinj and along the Adriatic Sea a delta encloses the isle of Buna as a strong natural feature, already setting the pace of this coast-to-mainland dynamic. The weaving flow of Buna river unveils the anthropocene landscape of agricultural patterns. Past these farmlands and partly sunk on the lake of Sash, lie the ruins of the city of Shas, an ancient settlement that is now a prospective archaeological area waiting to be discovered. Further along the river, the ruins of the Church of Shirgj appear near the bank, an idyllic prelude to the grandeur of old bridges, before the ancient settlement of Shkodra ahead. The story is concluded in the ancient Lake Shkodra, a rich conglomerate of other natural and cultural heritage all along its shoreline. At the vanguard of this lake, high on a hill stands the Rozafa Castle, whose materiality is an epitome of thousands of years of stratified heritage. This journey from the Mediterranean coast towards the Balkans mainland aims to explain the complex and stratified nature of the landscape of Buna and represents both cultural and natural heritage as an inseparable part of the relationship between man and landscape. As Donald Meinig says: “Life must be lived amidst that which was made before. Every landscape is an accumulation. The past endures.”