The journey
Europe's most isolated communist state. Now its most surprising travel destination.
Albania was the most isolated country in Europe for 45 years — more closed than North Korea in the 1980s, ringed with 750,000 concrete bunkers, completely sealed from the outside world. When the dictatorship collapsed in 1991, the bunkers were all that remained of it.
Today Albania is one of the most extraordinary countries in Europe: beautiful, hospitable, and almost entirely undiscovered by Western tourism. Berat is one of the best-preserved Ottoman cities in the world. The Albanian Riviera is cleaner than Croatia and half the price. The food is magnificent.
Day by day
The itinerary
Tirana
Tirana — The Capital Reinvented
Tirana in 2026 is unrecognisable from the grey Soviet-style capital of 1991. Skanderbeg Square, repaved and airy. The BunkArt museums — one in Enver Hoxha's nuclear bunker, one in his secret police headquarters. The Blloku neighbourhood, once forbidden to ordinary Albanians, now the best café quarter in the Balkans.
Northern Albania
Kruja & Shkodër — The Fortress and the Lake
Kruja: the castle where Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg held off the Ottoman army for 25 years. The old bazaar below it is unchanged since the 17th century. Then north to Shkodër, where Lake Shkodër — the largest lake in the Balkans — meets the Albanian Alps.
Central Albania
Berat — The City of a Thousand Windows
Berat is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. The Mangalem and Gorica neighbourhoods: Ottoman houses stacked up the hillside, every façade a grid of windows looking down at the Osum river. The castle above it. The Onufri Museum inside.
Southern Albania
Gjirokastër — The Stone City
Gjirokastër: another UNESCO city, birthplace of Enver Hoxha and of novelist Ismail Kadare. The vast Ottoman houses of the Bazaar neighbourhood. The castle with its Cold War American spy plane on permanent display. The most atmospheric city in Albania.
Albanian Riviera
Sarandë & the Albanian Coast
The Albanian Riviera: clear Ionian water, beaches without crowds, restaurants serving fresh fish caught that morning. Sarandë, the coastal resort town. Butrint, the UNESCO-listed ancient city at the edge of a lagoon. An afternoon of complete ease.
Central Albania
Apollonia & Return
Apollonia: an ancient Greek city founded in 588 BC, its columns still standing in a landscape of olive trees and silence. Then north back toward Tirana, through the Albanian lowlands.
Tirana
Tirana — Farewell
Final morning in Tirana. The National History Museum. A last coffee in Blloku. Farewell dinner at one of Tirana's new-generation restaurants, where Albanian cuisine is being rethought from the ground up.
