With around 23,000, the "city of stone," located in a mountain valley down south, was in many ways our favorite stop. A 4½-hour drive from Shkodër (it´s just under four from Tirana), it has an old quarter whose intensely atmospheric feel makes its UNESCO World Heritage Site designation feel amply deserved. With its origins in the early 14th century under Byzantine rulers it was conquered by the Ottomans in in 1418 and ruled by them as their Albanian capital until it became part of the early-20th-century Kingdom of Albania. Under Enver Hoxha it became an industrial and commercial center but was also designated a "museum city." 

Up on the hillside, Gjirokastër´s UNESCO World Heritage core is medieval Qafa e Pazarit (Old Bazaar, pictured here), with sloping cobblestone streets these days lined with tourist-oriented restaurants, shops, and lodgings (we stayed in an excellent one, with 18 traditionally furnished rooms, called Hotel Argjiro, had a tasty Albanian repast at Furra (also a charming small hotel), and drinks at cozy, funky Bar Bukowski, named I forget why after the transgressive, German-born California cult writer of the 1960s and 70s Charles Bukowski - dubbed by Time magazine the country´s "laureate of lowlife").

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

David Paul Appell