The Italian Archaeological Mission in Butrint in the archives of the Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene, Athens

In October 2024 the team of the Butrint Project had the opportunity to consult the archives of the Italian Archaeological School at Athens (SAIA).

The long history and and its prestige has made the SAIA a a point of reference for the training and further education of numerous Italian archaeologists, among whom are also the main protagonists of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Butrint in the 1930s and 1940s: Luigi Maria Ugolini, Pirro Marconi, Domenico Mustilli and Dario Rovers Monaco were all students of this Institution. 

The analysis of the material deposited in the archives of the SAIA helped us not only to have new insights on their life as students, but most of all to gather new, relevant and unexpected information on their work. The topographic surveys in southern Albania, the excavation in Butrint, the study of the inscriptions found during this work and the first setting of the archaeological museum of the site are widely represented and constitute an invaluable source of information to reconstruct the history of research in the ancient Epirote city.