The amphitheatre of Durrës was built in ancient Dyrrachium, a major Adriatic port connected with Italy and the Balkan interior. Greek colonists had established Epidamnos in the seventh century BCE beside an existing Illyrian landscape, and Rome later made the city a crucial terminus of the Via Egnatia. During the early second century CE, probably under Trajan or his successors, builders set a vast arena partly into a hillside and partly on supporting vaults, placing mass entertainment beside dense urban neighborhoods.

Its elliptical arena hosted gladiatorial combat, animal spectacles, and public ceremonies before audiences often estimated in the tens of thousands, making it the largest known Roman amphitheatre in the Balkans. Stone seating rose above corridors, stairways, entrances, and service rooms that moved spectators and performers through the structure. The hillside reduced some engineering demands, while the seaward side required massive substructures. Officials and wealthy patrons used games to display generosity, loyalty to Rome, and civic status within a diverse provincial port.

The amphitheatre suffered damage from earthquakes and changing urban conditions during late antiquity. As gladiatorial spectacles ended, parts were reused for housing, burial, defense, and Christian worship. A small chapel inserted into the galleries preserves mosaics of saints and donors, probably created between the sixth and tenth centuries, demonstrating how a building once associated with violence acquired sacred meaning. Medieval walls and later houses crossed or concealed the ruins, while Durrës remained continuously occupied under Byzantine, Venetian, Ottoman, and modern Albanian rule.

The monument largely disappeared beneath the city until Albanian archaeologist Vangjel Toçi identified it in 1966. Excavation exposed substantial sections but could not clear the entire structure because homes and streets stood above it. Research revealed complex phases of Roman construction, earthquake damage, Christian adaptation, and medieval reuse. Conservation since the late twentieth century has involved Albanian and international specialists, yet drainage, unstable masonry, vegetation, pollution, and the unavoidable proximity of modern buildings continue to place the site at risk.

Today visitors descend from contemporary Durrës into corridors that preserve nearly two millennia of urban change. The site is not a detached ruin but part of a living neighborhood, so protection requires negotiation with residents, infrastructure, tourism, and development. The chapel mosaics are especially sensitive to moisture and require controlled access. The amphitheatre matters for its monumental scale, but its deeper value lies in reuse: Roman entertainment architecture became a Christian sanctuary, a fortified and domestic landscape, a buried memory, and finally a central monument of Albanian archaeology.