Berat

a city in southern Albania, on the Osum River; administrative center of Berat Region. Population, 24,000 (1967). Trade center of the tobacco-growing, horticulture, and viticulture region. There is cotton textile industry and processing of olive oil and tobacco. There are petroleum enterprises in Kuçova, near Berat.

Berat has been known since the fourth century B.C.; in the second century B.C. it was known as Antipatreia and in the early Middle Ages, as Pulcheriopolis. From the ninth century A.D. it was called Beligrad (hence the name Berat).

Architectural monuments include remains of a 13th-century fortress, residential blocks from the Middle Ages, the Church of St. Mary of Vlakhern (13th century; frescoes from 1578 by Nikolla of Neokastron), an 18th-century cathedral with a carved wooden iconostasis (19th century), the chapel of a sect of Helvetians (1782), and a bridge across the Osum River (1780). There is a museum of local lore containing monuments of archaeology and applied art.