Albania: Ten Attractions and Natural Wonders

A small country with a long coastline

Albania spent most of the 20th century sealed off — first by war, then by one of the most isolated communist regimes in Europe — and only really opened to travellers in the 2000s. The upside for anyone visiting now is a Mediterranean country that still feels unhurried: Roman and Greek ruins with almost no crowds, two perfectly preserved Ottoman towns, a wall of 2,500-metre mountains in the north, and a stretch of Ionian coast that the rest of Europe somehow overlooked.

The ten places below run from the far south, near the Greek border, to the alps on the Montenegro and Kosovo frontier. Distances are short but roads are slow and winding, so journeys take longer than the map suggests. Late spring and early autumn are the sweet spots; July and August are hot and, on the coast, finally getting busy.

1. Butrint

On a green peninsula in the far south, ringed by water on three sides, Butrint is one of the most complete ancient sites in the Mediterranean and one of the least visited. People lived here for well over two thousand years — Greek colonists, then Romans, then Byzantines, then Venetians — and each layer is still legible: a theatre first built by the Greeks, Roman baths, a 6th-century baptistery with a large mosaic floor, and a small Venetian castle guarding the channel.

What makes Butrint special is the setting. The ruins sit in natural woodland of holly oak and bay laurel, so visitors come across them along shaded paths rather than filing past them. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992 and a national park since 2000, about 18 kilometres by road from the beach town of Sarandë, and easily the best day out in southern Albania.

2. Berat, the Town of a Thousand Windows

Berat is a well-kept Ottoman town wrapped around a rocky hill on the Osum River. Two old quarters — Mangalem below the castle, Gorica across the river — face each other across the water, their tall white houses stacked so tightly up the slope that the rows of big wooden windows seem to overlap. Hence the nickname.

Up on the hill, the castle is not a museum but a lived-in neighbourhood: families still occupy houses inside the walls, among Byzantine churches and the ruins of a mosque. One church holds the Onufri Museum, named for a 16th-century icon painter famous for his intense colours. Berat was added to the UNESCO World Heritage listing in 2008, joining Gjirokastër (listed in 2005), and sits about 70 kilometres south of Tirana as the crow flies.

3. Gjirokastër, the Stone City

Further south, Gjirokastër is the other great Ottoman survivor, and it has a completely different character from Berat. Where Berat is white and delicate, Gjirokastër is grey and fortress-like: the tall merchant houses are built of stone, up to five storeys high, roofed with flat stones, and built like small strongholds.

A huge castle dominates the ridge, holding a military museum and, oddly, a captured United States Air Force plane from the Cold War. Gjirokastër was the birthplace of Enver Hoxha, Albania's long-ruling dictator, and of the novelist Ismail Kadare, whose book Chronicle in Stone is set in its lanes. The old Ottoman bazaar, rebuilt in the 19th century after a fire, is still the heart of the old town.

4. Krujë Castle and the Skanderbeg Museum

Clinging to a mountainside about an hour north of Tirana, Krujë is where Albania's national story is centred. In the 15th century the nobleman Gjergj Kastrioti, known as Skanderbeg, held this castle against the Ottoman Empire for a quarter of a century, becoming a symbol of resistance across Christian Europe.

Inside the walls, a striking building opened in 1982, inspired by traditional Albanian stone towers, houses the Skanderbeg Museum, which tells his story through objects from his time, reproductions and large paintings. Just outside the gate, the old bazaar is a popular place to shop for crafts and souvenirs. It is an easy half-day trip from the capital.

5. The Blue Eye (Syri i Kaltër)

Between Sarandë and Gjirokastër, a river simply begins: water forces its way up out of a limestone cavern with such volume that it forms a pool, ringed with pale turquoise and dropping to a dark blue-black centre. Divers have gone down more than 50 metres without establishing how deep it goes, and the water is very cold.

The spring is the source of the Bistricë River, which runs about 25 kilometres to the Ionian Sea south of Sarandë. It sits in a small protected natural monument of oak and sycamore, reached by a side road off the Sarandë–Gjirokastër road, and is one of the most visited places in the south.

6. The Albanian Riviera

South of the Llogara Pass, the coast road drops off a high mountain wall onto a run of Ionian shoreline that stayed almost undeveloped until recently: the Albanian Riviera. The villages — Dhërmi, Himarë, Qeparo, Vuno — sit above small pebble coves with very clear water, backed by olive terraces and the bare Ceraunian Mountains.

At the southern end, near Butrint, the little town of Ksamil looks out on a scatter of tiny islands just offshore. The Riviera has been "discovered" and is building fast, but outside high summer it still offers a quieter version of the Mediterranean than most of its neighbours. The drive over Llogara itself, through alpine pine forest with the sea far below, is a highlight in its own right.

7. Lake Komani

Lake Komani is a reservoir, created by a hydroelectric dam on the Drin River in the 1980s, but the result is one of the great boat trips in Europe. The water fills a canyon so narrow and deep that in places the ferry seems to be nosing into a blank wall of rock before the passage opens again.

A working passenger ferry runs the length of it, roughly two and a half hours, carrying villagers, backpackers, and the occasional car between the town of Komani and Fierzë. Many travellers use it as the scenic way to reach Valbona and the northern mountains, and smaller boats serve villages that can only be reached by water.

8. Theth and the Accursed Mountains

The mountains along the northern border — the Prokletije, or "Accursed Mountains" — are the wildest corner of Albania: limestone peaks over 2,500 metres, beech forest, and stone villages long cut off for much of the year. The road to Theth from Boga has been paved in recent years, but snow still closes it through much of the winter.

Theth, with its lone stone church in a green bowl of pasture, is the usual base. From here trails lead to the Grunas waterfall and over the 1,795-metre Valbona Pass — a long, classic day hike into the next valley. The village also has a "lock-in tower," where men once sheltered during blood feuds under the old customary law, the Kanun.

9. Tirana and Skanderbeg Square

Albania's capital is small, young, and much more enjoyable than its reputation. The centre is Skanderbeg Square, a huge car-free plaza with the national history museum on one side and the Et'hem Bey Mosque on another. Around it, whole blocks of grey communist apartment buildings have been painted in bright colours and patterns, a project started by Edi Rama, mayor from 2000 to 2011 and later prime minister.

The city's best sights deal with the recent past. Bunk'Art 1 and 2 are two underground bunkers built under Hoxha's orders, now turned into museums of the communist decades. The House of Leaves, the former headquarters of the Sigurimi, covers surveillance and the secret police. For a break from all that, a cable car climbs Mount Dajti for the view back over the city.

10. Rozafa Castle and Shkodër

Shkodër, in the northwest, is one of Albania's oldest cities and the gateway to Lake Shkodër, the largest lake in the Balkans, shared with Montenegro. On a hill above the city stands Rozafa Castle, its walls, first raised by the Illyrians and mostly Venetian as they stand today, spread along the ridge with a wide view over the Buna and Drin rivers.

The castle carries one of the region's darkest legends — that a woman, Rozafa, was walled into the foundations so the fortress would stand. The city below is flat and green, with a long history of trade with Italy, and it works well as a staging post between the northern mountains and the coast.

Albania rewards a slower trip than most people give it. Two weeks is enough to link the south coast, the Ottoman towns, the capital, and the northern mountains, and almost everywhere the food is good, the prices are low, and the sites are still uncrowded.