As Albania is still based on small communities, when you get to a viewpoint you are looking at the same scenery people have looked at for hundreds of years. This is particularly the case at Phonike – an ancient Hellenistic city built on a plateau ridge looking out towards the port at Butrint. It is easy to see why this was a strategically important place to build a settlement, even if a steep climb up the hill! 

What I find fascinating about this place though is the fact that its strategic location was recognised even in modern times, with these communist concrete bunkers lining the ridge. Over 700,000 bunkers were built across Albania by the Hoxha regime, expecting a Russian invasion that never came. These concrete communist monuments merge with the ancient history of the same site and look out over a view that has hardly changed over the centuries.

Phonike is pretty hard to find and not signposted anywhere (even the locals we were with had trouble finding it). There is not much to see but the view and a few remains of the ancient town. The size of the theatre is almost as large as Epidauros in Greece, though hardly preserved.