Apollonia of Illyria: from the historical aerial photographs to the recent high-resolution satellite images

south-western Albania and together with numerous other settlements of this territory, is part of the research activities promoted within the International Joint Archaeological Laboratories 2021- 2022 Project by the National Research Council and is a joint endeavour between the Institute of Cultural Heritage Sciences and the Institute of Archaeology - Academy of Albanological Studies of the Polytechnic University of Tirana. The ancient city of Apollonia is situated approximately 7,5 km SW of the city of Fier and 9 km E of the Adriatic Sea, near the modern village of Pojan. The objective of this study is to present a systematic analysis of the remote sensing documentation available for this area in order to offer a wider knowledge of the topography of the city, using an approach to research which has, so far, been neglected. Infact, many remote sensing images areavailable, starting from the aerial photographs taken by the Italian Military Geographical Institute (IGM) in 1936, the high-resolution space photographs collected by the American spy satellite Hexagon KH-9 between 1971 and 1980, up to the conspicuous archive of recent high-resolution satellite images acquired from civil platforms. This multi-temporal data set, collected at different scales and spatial resolutions, also constitutes an opportunity for detecting paleo-environmental features and the study of the historical landscape in which the city lies, the fertile plain of Musacchia dominated by the hills of Mallakastra, along the course of the ancient Aoos River.