Spazi ed edifici pubblici nelle città dell'Epiro in età tardo-classica ed ellenistica

Nowadays, within the studies devoted to the public spaces and buildings in the urban centres of Late Classical and Hellenistic Epirus, a contribution thoroughly investigating the architecture of political and civil character in both its singularity and in its connections to the urban and regional context is still lacking. The aim of the present research is to fill this gap through a contextual approach focusing on the buildings fulfilling an administrative, political, or economic function in eight major cities of nowadays southern Albania and north-western Greece. In order to achieve this goal, two main topics have been developed: first, the issue of the function and architectural form of the buildings and their typological evolution from the genesis of Epirote urban culture during the 4th century to the end of the 1st century BC, with reference to the architectural and urban models spread in the Mediterranean basin from the end of the Classical period; second, a better definition of the institutional and administrative frame of the urban centres of the region on the one hand, and of their role within the ethnic and tribal groups and the Epirote federal state on the other. From a methodological point of view, the archaeological data provided by the excavations have been compared with the information derived from the literary, epigraphic, and numismatic sources.