Durrës

Greek colonists from Corinth and Corcyra founded Epidamnos in 627 BC on the coast of the Illyrian Taulantii, who helped them settle. After the Illyrian Wars of 229 BC the city passed to Rome, which called it Dyrrachium and made it a major military and naval base. Under Rome the city prospered as the western end of the Via Egnatia, the road to Thessalonica and Constantinople; Augustus settled his veterans here, and in the 4th century it became the capital of the province of Epirus Nova. After an earthquake, Anastasius I rebuilt its walls as the strongest fortifications in the western Balkans.

Under Byzantium Dyrrachium was a key port linking the empire with western Europe. The Normans of Robert Guiscard took it in 1082 and returned in 1107–08 and 1185; Bulgarians, local Albanian families and Venice all contested it. The city held out against Mehmed II in 1466 but fell to the Ottomans in 1501, and for two centuries it declined into a den of piracy before trade with Venice and later Austria revived the port.

Durrës became the capital of the new Albanian state on 7 March 1914 under Prince Wilhelm and remained so until 1920. Under King Zog Italian investment built a modern harbour in 1927, and Zog's royal villa rose on the hill. Italian troops landed here on 7 April 1939, and the port was bombed and blown up during the war. Under communism the city grew strongly in population and economic activity, and it became the terminus of Albania's first railway, begun in 1947. In the crises of the 1990s it was the centre of the European food-aid programme and an Italian-led peacekeeping force.

Durrës is defined by the sea and by layers of the past visible in its streets: the amphitheatre, built in the 2nd century and discovered only in 1966, the late Roman and Byzantine walls, the Venetian Tower and the Fatih Mosque of 1502. The city's many names — Epidamnos, Dyrrachium, Durazzo in Italian and Drač in the Slavic languages — reflect the peoples who have ruled or traded here.

Its cultural life centres on the Aleksandër Moisiu Theatre, named after the Austrian actor Alexander Moissi, who was of Albanian descent, and on the Aleksandër Moisiu University, the country's newest public university, founded in 2005. Football means Teuta, which plays at the Niko Dovana Stadium. The archaeological museum, the largest in Albania, holds finds from the ancient city.

The city has long been the centre of Albanian mass beach tourism, and summer reshapes its character: hotels and apartments fill, the promenade is crowded until late, and the beaches to the south are lined with umbrellas. Religious life is mixed and relaxed, with mosques of the Ottoman and royal periods and a history that includes Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish communities.

About 113,000 people lived in the city's municipal unit at the 2011 census, making Durrës one of the largest cities in Albania. Its transport links, economic institutions and industrial tradition give it a leading place in the country's economy, and it is the starting point of the main national roads and of the railway.

The port, the largest in Albania and one of the busiest for passengers on the Adriatic, with about 1.5 million passengers a year in the mid-2010s, is central to the city's life, alongside a shipyard and factories producing leather, plastic and tobacco goods. Tourism is the other pillar: the southern coast at Golem has seen intensive, largely unplanned development, while beach resorts have been built at Lalzi Bay to the north since 2009.

The earthquake of November 2019 struck the city hard, and the Niko Dovana Stadium served as a shelter in its aftermath. The government plans to move the port north to Porto Romano and build a luxury marina and housing on the present port grounds, a project that would reshape the waterfront. Daily rhythms follow the season: quiet in winter, crowded and late in July and August.

Durrës eats from the sea. The restaurants of the promenade and the beach boulevard serve the seafood of the Albanian coast: grilled sea bass and bream, and fish fried whole. Fish restaurants are busiest on summer evenings, when the promenade fills with people.

Inland dishes are also on every menu. Tavë kosi, mutton and rice baked under a mixture of yoghurt, eggs, butter and flour, is regarded as one of the national dishes, and fërgesë, a casserole of peppers, tomatoes, onions and gjizë, a salted curd cheese, is another familiar dish. Byrek, flaky filo layered with cheese, spinach or minced meat, is the standard cheap meal, sold from bakeries all over the city.

Meals often start with homemade cheese, yoghurt, dhallë, a yoghurt drink, and pickles, and end with strong Turkish-style coffee or a glass of raki, the clear spirit made from grapes, plums or blackberries. In the old town, cafés around the amphitheatre and the Venetian Tower serve coffee with views of the ruins.