The Forum in the ancient city of Butrint has never been conclusively identified, but is thought to have been in the unexcavated area that lies between the theatre and the so-called Gymnasium. During the archaeological excavations of 2004, the remains of a flight of monumental marble steps that had led from the pavement of the forum to the threshold of the tripartite building were revealed, together with traces of an opulently decorated room with a marble pavement. This room was apparently abandoned by the 3rd century, after which it was used as a marble workshop. Over 80 kg of marble flakes were recovered, together with broken pieces of sculpture - evidence of the re-working of classical statues on a large scale. A fragment of togate shoulder was found to be part of the monumental statue found in 2003. Although the forum excavations were limited in scale, the information derived from them is of immense value. The use of such an important area of the forum for marble working suggests that the importance of the public centre of the town had declined and that the public areas of the city were losing their monumentality from the 3rd century onwards. The ceramics found there indicate that this was the earliest possible date for changes in the area.

During the season of 2005 the excavations were undertaken in front of the Tripartite Building to the east of the Theatre aiming to enlarge earlier excavations and extend the search for the Forum, which revealed itself, more than three metres down, in three trenches. The area was paved with limestone slabs and bounded by a gutter along its perimeter and by two marble steps leading to a colonnaded portico. At the north this was crowned by the Tripartite Building. The Tripartite Building is associated with a monumental inscription dedicated to Minerva Augusta - though any such shrine was probably the fourth in a sequence of buildings occupying this spot. The earliest structure appears to be an east-facing Hellenistic structure, which may have functioned as a temple. The Tripartite Building faces south and its construction can be linked to a Roman building programme intended to monumentalise the northern end of the Forum. The building was richly painted and adorned with revetments of imported marbles, and may have been linked to cult spaces close to a sacred Hellenistic well cut into the acropolis hill. In front of the building, a large rectangular brick structure may have served as a base for a monumental statue group.

In the season of 2006, the excavations were focused in the area of Tripartite Building, which is part of Butrint’s Forum. This building is situated at the north end of the central square of the ancient city and dated to the 1st century AD or earlier. It was originally a large and imposing structure housing Roman shrines. An inscription to Minerva Augusta found in the central chamber suggests that the tripartite building was a capitolium, containing temples dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. The north end of the forum is now known to have encompassed the tripartite building, and the so-called ‘magazine’ (store room) to its east. It is now clear that the vaulted ‘magazine’ is actually a two-storey building approached by about 20 marble steps from the forum floor, making it the most prominent structure in the forum, perhaps even a temple of the imperial cult. A sacred well adjacent to the tripartite building drew on water from a natural fissure running along the base of the acropolis. In the Hellenistic period a rock-cut cascade funnelled water from the acropolis into a channel along the west side of the buildings. Hellenistic phases of activity were also found cut into the bedrock beneath the tripartite building. Two large votive pits were excavated containing vast quantities of ceramics, including a terracotta sculpture of a Bacchic reveller and a silver amulet of a caduceus depicting the two entwined snakes of the Greek god Hermes. In a later deposit an extremely rare and exceptional intaglio glass gems was found depicting a semi-nude standing nymph wearing a shawl draped about her shoulders. It is likely to have been manufactured in Rome in the 1st century AD and attests to the eminence of the Roman aristocracy at Butrint. Sometime after the mid-3rd century AD a dramatic rearrangement of space and function took place, including the demise of the forum as a public centre and the abandonment and plundering of the tripartite complex. The forum pavement was buried, the marble steps of the tripartite building were robbed, statuary was systematically dismantled and destroyed and a substantial terrace was created in front of the tripartite building. Thereafter occupation of the area was sporadic until the 6th or 7th century, when numerous burials were interred. Further rearrangement took place under Byzantine rule and in the medieval period the tripartite building was used for habitation and further burials associated with a nearby church. From the latest deposits emerged a 16th-century silver coin of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who campaigned in this region in the 1530s and under whose reign the Ottoman Empire reached its apogee.

During the excavation season of 2007, the southwest corner of the Forum was exposed which revealed that the pavement covered an area of 20m north-south by an estimated 45m east-west. The Forum pavements consist of fine limestone slabs surrounded by a perimeter gutter leading up to two marble steps. The steps along the south side led directly into a building fronted by granite columns. The architecture suggests that the building may have functioned as a basilica, which would have housed legal and civic offices. In front of the probable basilica, a fine marble moulding for a statue base was found straddling the gutter, probably one of many that were originally located along the Forum outer limits. The west side of the Forum was originally defined by a roadway that allowed access from the waterfront to the theatre area. By the 2nd century AD, the road was constrained by the construction of the Peristyle Building that included a long portico along the western side of the Forum. The Tripartite Building on the northwest side of the Forum can be interpreted as three shrines-one of which was dedicated to Minerva Augusta. To the east of the three rooms, a lofty flight of marble steps led up from the Forum pavement to an elevated terrace, and presumably to an important Roman building. Despite the demolition of an extensive tract of the Hellenistic city wall at this point it seems likely that the Roman Forum was incorporated into an existing agora. Pre-Roman material is prevalent in the excavation assemblages and, aside from Hellenistic ceramics, 38 coins of the 3rd -2nd centuries BC have been found in the excavations at the Forum. A cast mosaic fragment found in the Forum would have been made in Italy, and attest further to the wealth and contacts of the inhabitants of Butrint in the Augustan period. The archaeological evidence from the excavation appears to demonstrate that the institution of the Forum and other associated Roman buildings occurred in the late Republican period. The 2007 excavations produced a range of significant sculptural fragments, revealing two distinct phases of dismantling, destruction and discarding of statuary: firstly, in the mid-late 3rd century AD, a phase to which the life-size marble togate Roman statue belongs; and secondly, during the period of urban revival and landscaping of the 10th – 11th centuries. A fragment of another life-sized male figure with shoulder drapery was found also in this season of excavations. Furthermore, two under life-sized parts of nude male legs again indicate the presence of statues or deities or heroes in the Roman Forum of Butrint. One of the most surprising results from the archaeological excavation is that the forum pavement is inclined by 0,50m from south to north. It is unlikely that this is an original feature of the Forum and so must be the result of displacement through either subsidence or seismic activity. According to environmental interpretations the second version it is most likely. This event took place during the late 3rd or early 4th century and resulted in a rapid inundation of the Forum, which then effectively became a pond in the centre of the ancient city. It is evident from numerous architectural fragments that the buildings lining the Forum were spoliated and demolished. In the late 5th or 6th century, however, the Forum area was re-occupied. A structure with a large apse was erected in the southern area of the Forum and hard cocciopesto floors were laid to combat water intrusion during seasonal flooding episodes. This building and other late antique structures were cleared in a wide scale redevelopment of the city in the 10th or 11th century, where stepped terraces were established for tenement buildings. The Forum has yielded a number of Middle Byzantine coins, which were found in terrace walls, thereby dating this constructing phase. Associated ceramic finds of the 10th – 11th and 11th – 12th centuries support this emerging picture. Late medieval ceramics of the 13th – 14th centuries and a few dated to the Venetian period (15th-16th centuries) indicate that the area remained more or less under continuous occupation until the attested abandonment of the city by the Venetians in 1572. The most significant find of the later period was discovered concealed within the wall of a simple domestic building in the area of the ex Roman Forum: a 14th century coin hoard, consisting of 15 Venetian torneselli (base silver coin).

The Roman Forum at Butrint has been the subject of a number of separate investigations in past years, by the Institute of Archaeology, the Butrint Foundation and more recently by the University of Notre Dame. In 2011, an American-run team of international participants opened two fresh trenches in woodland to the rear of the Gymnasium with the intention of locating the eastern extent of the Forum. Apart from the discovery of this side of the forum, the excavations did also reveal a deep sequence of deposits, which provided significant information about the urban history of Butrint over a period of 2000 years. As it does to the west, the pavement of the Forum survives remarkably intact on its east side, with large limestone slabs still in place over much of the surface. It now seems that the pavement extended over a huge (for such a small city) area measuring 20x70m. Previous environmental and tectonic studies by the Butrint Foundation have already established that the effects of an earthquake in the 4th century AD caused buildings around the Forum to collapse and the pavement itself to become inundated and abandoned, thus sealing it in its fine condition. The unearthing of missing slabs in 2011, however, allowed a window of excavation beneath the floor, and produced a collection of ceramics – including Corinthian amphorae – and other artefacts that date from the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Above the filled-in pavement, attempts were made to re-occupy the site, seen in the identification of 5th- and 6th-century buildings, a well and, progressively later, graves. Later still, a substantial house (dated by Venetian coin and ceramic evidence to the late 14th or 15th century) stood over the Forum. Built from fragments of re-used Roman masonry, its earth-bonded walls and collapsed roof showed its destruction by fire in the 16th century. Remains found of wheat, barley, legumes, peas and olives give a clear insight into the available diet of the late medieval period.