The Bay of Vlorë (, ) is a large
bay of the
Adriatic Sea
The Adriatic Sea () is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Se ...
situated along the
Albanian Adriatic Sea Coast on the
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...
in
Southern Europe. It opens to the sea in the northwest and is largely surrounded by the lagoon of
Narta in the north, the city of
Vlorë in the northeast, the mountains of the
Ceraunians in the east and southeast, and the peninsula of
Karaburun in the southwest and west.
Biodiversity
The bay is categorized as an
Important Bird and
Plant Area by virtue of it provides excellent habitats for a vast array of
bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...
and
plant
Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ...
species.
Geography
The
Karaburun Peninsula, which stretches at the meetingpoint of the
Adriatic and
Ionian Sea, encompasses the western shoreline of the bay that is highly hilly and irregular in structure and is home to the
Karaburun-Sazan Marine Park.
History
In classical antiquity the Bay of Vlorë constituted the southern limit of the Illyrian coast. The Bay is delimited by the mountainous area of the
Karaburun Peninsula (ancient ''Akrokeraunia'') to the southwest and the
Ceraunian Mountains to the south, which represented a natural frontier separating
Illyria from
Epirus
Epirus () is a Region#Geographical regions, geographical and historical region, historical region in southeastern Europe, now shared between Greece and Albania. It lies between the Pindus Mountains and the Ionian Sea, stretching from the Bay ...
. The coastal area of the Bay was settled by
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
colonists
A settler or a colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that a settler establishes is a settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among the first settli ...
, who traditionally founded
Oricum,
Thronion and
Aulon.
Illyrians
The Illyrians (, ; ) were a group of Indo-European languages, Indo-European-speaking people who inhabited the western Balkan Peninsula in ancient times. They constituted one of the three main Paleo-Balkan languages, Paleo-Balkan populations, alon ...
were found in the hinterland of the Bay. The area at the foot of the
Akrokeraunian Mountains including the
Dukat plain in the south of the Bay was inhabited by the southernmost Illyrians, while
Chaones and their territory,
Chaonia, were located to the south of the Akrokeraunia.
In
Roman times, the region was a significant place and was the scene, for example, of some of
Caesar's battles. It has been suggested that
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...
landed inside the Bay of Vlorë from
Brundusium across the Adriatic, in order to carry on the
Civil War
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
against
Pompey
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (; 29 September 106 BC – 28 September 48 BC), known in English as Pompey ( ) or Pompey the Great, was a Roman general and statesman who was prominent in the last decades of the Roman Republic. ...
in Illyricum and the oncoming
Battle of Dyrrhachium on 10 July 48 BC.
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...
mentions ''Aulon'' (
Vlorë), locating it in
Taulantian territory.
In one account, 18 ships full of merchandise have sunk in the Bay. Studying the Bay of Vlorë, it has been one of the main projects of the navigation department of the
University of Vlora in the last few years.
The southwestern end of the Bay, at the naval base of
Pashaliman, has been used as a harbor since antiquity. The city was called
Oricum. During the
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
, it was temporarily a Soviet naval base, the only one in the
Mediterranean sea
The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...
.
See also
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Biodiversity of Albania
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Geography of Albania
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Protected areas of Albania
References
Bibliography
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Bays of Albania
Bays of the Mediterranean
Bodies of water of Albania
Important Bird Areas of Albania
Albanian Adriatic Sea Coast
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