DURAZZO, clii-riit's,!) (Turk. Darts, Slay. Bra tell, Albanian 1)urcssi, from Lat. Dyrrhachitun, from Gk. ..leiVixtor, from Pro-, dys-, bad y Hai, to break, in allusion to the surf on the peninsula). A decayed maritime town of European Turkey, in the tilayet of Scutari (Albania), built on the rocky peninsula of Pelt,. in the Adriatic. about 55 miles south of Scutari (Map: Turkey in Europe, B 4). It is surrounded by dilapidated old walls. The town has been the seat of a Catholic archbishop since the days of Justinian. The harbor has been silted up. Du razzo exports to Austria-Hungary wool, raw silk, and some grain. Population. about 1200.
Durazzo is the ancient Epidamnus, which was founded in ages 625 by a band of Corcyrwans and Corinthians. Epidamnus became a great and populous city, hut was much harassed by internal party strifes, the banishment of its aristocratic element in n.c. 436. and the consequent dispute
regarding authority between Coreyra and Cor inth being one of the causes which led up to the Peloponnesian War. It passed to the Romans in B.C. 229, and its name was changed to Dyrrlm cilium. It later became the seat of a Roman colony, and an important landing-place for those sailing from Brundnsium, in Italy, to Greece. Dyrrhachium was the starting-point of the Via Egnatia, leading to Byzantium. Here Pom pey was for some time beleaguered by C:rsar. About the end of the fourth century it became the capital of the Byzantine Eparchy of Yew Epirus. The town was taken by the Ostrogoths, Bulgarians. and Normans. and in the latter part of the Middle Ages belonged successively to the House of Anjou (then ruling in Naples) and to Venice, from whom it was wrested by the Turks in 1501.