Slave Square (Ulcinj)

 museum, archaeology museum, ethnography

This is a small square, once known as the Slave Square (Albanian: Tregu i Peshkatarëve, Tregu i Skllevërve or Tregu i Servantesit). It is surrounded by arches, due to the fact that since the middle of the 17th century Ulcinj had become a significant slave market. These slaves used to be captured by Ulcinj pirates. Most of the slaves in Ulcinj came from Italy and Dalmatia. The Ulcinj pirates mostly robbed rich villas along the coast of Apulia and Sicily, and then they would capture the owners and sell them as slaves. The people of Ulcinj kept the slaves as convicts and did not use them for any kind of work, but to get the ransom from their relatives, friends, or countrymen of the captured people. Therefore they had to make it possible for the slaves to send messages to their homes or relatives, in order to inform the family or the municipality about their members to have been made into slaves in Ulcinj, so that they would come to offer the ransom. Since the middle of the 18th century the tastes have changed, so that the courtiers began to look for slaves from Africa. Later they would have been sold again or brought to Ulcinj, where they soon became free citizens and they would be involved in agriculture and seafaring. There is a small community of their descendants still living in Ulcinj.