Fier
| Fier | ||
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| Municipality | ||
Fier city center
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 Fier
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| Coordinates: 40°43′N 19°33′E / 40.717°N 19.550°ECoordinates: 40°43′N 19°33′E / 40.717°N 19.550°E | ||
| Country |
 Albania
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| County | Fier | |
| Government | ||
| • Mayor | Armando Subashi (SP) | |
| Area | ||
| • Municipality | 619.90 km2 (239.34 sq mi) | |
| • Administrative Unit | 78 km2 (30 sq mi) | |
| Elevation | 20 m (70 ft) | |
| Population (2011) | ||
| • Municipality | 85,000 | |
| • Municipality density | 140/km2 (360/sq mi) | |
| • Administrative Unit | 120,655 | |
| • Administrative Unit density | 1,500/km2 (4,000/sq mi) | |
| Time zone | CET (UTC+1) | |
| • Summer (DST) | CEST (UTC+2) | |
| Postal Code | 9301-9305 | |
| Area Code | (0)34 | |
| Vehicle registration | AL | |
| Website | Official Website | |
Fier (Albanian: Fier or Fieri) is a city and a municipality in Fier County in southwest Albania. Fier is 11 km (7 mi) from the ruins of the ancient city of Apollonia. The population of the former municipality at the 2011 census was 55,845.
Geographically, it is located on the center of the country surrounded by hills. The city is located some 16 kilometres east of the Adriatic Sea and 100 kilometres south of Tirana.
The ruins of Apollonia are situated in the Fier region. Apollonia was founded in 588 BCE by Greek colonists from Corfu and Corinth, on a site initially occupied by Illyrian tribes.
The name comes from Albanian meaning fern. A hypothesis is that the name of the city comes probably from the Italian word fiera, meaning trade fair in English, because in the 14th and 15th century the location was used by the Venetian traders as a marketplace to purchase agricultural products from the Myzeqe lowlands. The settlement took city status in 1864 when Kahreman Pasha Vrioni, the local governor, asked from some French architects to project a future city as an artisan and trade center. During the 1864–1865 period a market for 122 merchants was built along the Gjanica river. The first inhabitants of the city were the servants of Kahreman Pasha Vrioni and members of Vlach families that had lived in the area since the early 19th century period.
The history of Fier is bound up with that of the oil, gas and bitumen deposits nearby. The presence of asphalt and burning escapes of natural gas in the vicinity was recorded as early as the 1st century AD. Dioscorides, in Materia Medica, describes lumps of bitumen in the adjacent river Seman, and the concentrated pitch on the banks of the Vjosë river Strabo, writing in about AD 17 states:
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