Here we stayed up near the Kalaja e Beratit (Berat Castle), in one of the just five rooms of the charming little family-run, traditionally furnished Hotel Restaurant Klea - owned by Leonidha and his wife Boralda (who does much of the cooking) and run by their son Ksenofon and daughter, the eponymous Klea; their hearty and extremely flavorful Albanian home cooking is absolutely top notch, too). The castle complex has its origins in the fortifications built by Illyrians before 200 BCE, and what we see today dates mostly from the 13th century. Roaming its grounds is another experience in time travel, as well as popping into several of its little mosques and Orthodox Christian churches; one of the latter, the 229-year-old Dormition Cathedral (bottom left above - sounds far more grandiose then it is), is home to the Onufri National Iconographic Museum, specializing in Byzantine icons and art, and displaying some 175 examples; though I´m not religious, there´s just something about these kinds of images that fascinates me. Another remarkable feature is its cavernous water cistern, known locally as Sarandja or Saranxha, a towering vaulted space with massive masonry (above, bottom right) pillars dating back as far as the 11th century. You can stand at its doorway and peer down into the dark water - but there are no railings, so if you have vertigo, one false move... Anyway, apart from visiting the Citadel itself, we were enchanted by roaming the narrow cobblestone lanes (which become if anything more magical lamplit after dark. 

Read more in my post Our Eye-opening Exploration of Albania.

Wolfgang Sauber/David Paul Appell