Phoenice

Phoinike was an ancient city located in the Epirus landscape belonging to Chaonia. The ruins of the city are in the immediate vicinity of the town Delvina in southern Albania at today Finiq village on a 272 meters high hill. To the south stretches a level up to the lagoon of Butrint.

Phoinike already existed in the 5th century BC and is also attested in late antiquity. The attack of the Illyrians to the city in 230 BC contributed to the intervention and thus also to the expansion of the Romans on the east coast of the Adriatic.

In the first Macedonian War ( 215-205 BC) was sympathetic to the League of Epirus with Philip V, but you tried to mediate between the warring parties. So it was in the year 205 BC to the Peace Conference of Phoinike, while the Romans, tried to arrange Macedonians and Aetolians Epirotes itself. At least the Epirotes and thus Chaonia and Phoinike were spared from the war in the following years.

The bishop of the city took part in the Council of Ephesus 431.

The first excavations took place in the 1920s, Luigi Maria Ugolini. Phoinike excavated jointly by Albanian and Italian archaeologists today and examined. In 2006 a theater was discovered.