UNESCO Sites: Albania's Hidden Archaeological Treasures

CULTURE March 3, 2024 9 min read

Albania sits at the crossroads of Mediterranean and Balkan civilisations, and its soil holds layers that span three millennia: Illyrian settlements, Greek colonies, Roman roads, Byzantine monasteries, and Ottoman old towns. The country has four UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and several more candidates that would be world-famous were they located anywhere easier to reach. That they are not is, for now, precisely their appeal.

Butrint — Layers of the Ancient World

The ancient city of Butrint occupies a forested peninsula on a lagoon near Sarandë, and it is one of the most extraordinary archaeological sites in the Mediterranean. Greeks founded it in the 4th century BC; Romans built a forum, theatre, and aqueduct; Byzantines raised a baptistery with a stunning mosaic floor; Venetians fortified it against Ottoman attack. Each era left its mark on the same compact hilltop, making Butrint uniquely legible as a palimpsest of power across two and a half thousand years.

The national park around it — lagoons, wetlands, migratory birds — adds a natural dimension that most purely archaeological sites lack. Allow at least three to four hours, and come early before the day-trip coaches arrive from Sarandë.

Berat — The City of a Thousand Windows

Berat's Ottoman old town climbs a hillside above the Osum river in a cascade of white-washed houses with oversized windows — so many windows, stacked and reflecting the light, that the city earned its nickname centuries ago. The upper neighbourhood of Mangalemi is a living museum: families still occupy the old houses, a 13th-century castle sits above them on the ridge, and a cluster of Byzantine churches within the castle walls contains some of the finest medieval iconography in the Balkans.

The Onufri Iconographic Museum, housed in the Church of the Dormition of St Mary within the citadel, is unmissable. Its namesake, Onufri, was a 16th-century Albanian painter famous for a particular shade of vivid red that he reportedly derived from pomegranate juice, and whose work influenced the entire Orthodox iconographic tradition of the region.

Gjirokastër — The City of Stone

Gjirokastër's old bazaar and the houses that climb above it are built from the same grey limestone as the mountain behind them, giving the city an organic, fortress-like quality unlike anywhere else in the country. UNESCO listed it alongside Berat in 2005 as an exceptional example of a well-preserved Ottoman town. A massive castle dominates the ridge above — part museum, part arms depot, part open-air theatre for the national folk festival held here every five years.

This is also the birthplace of Enver Hoxha, Albania's communist dictator, and of Ismail Kadare, the country's greatest novelist — an unlikely pairing that says something about the city's complicated, layered identity.

Apollonia — The Philosopher's City

Not yet on the UNESCO list but arguably deserving a place on it, the ancient Greek city of Apollonia sits on a hill above the Myzeqe plain, 12 kilometres from Fier. Founded in 588 BC by Greek colonists from Corfu and Corinth, it grew into one of the most important cities in the ancient world: Julius Caesar used it as his base of operations during the civil war against Pompey, and the young Octavian — the future Emperor Augustus — studied rhetoric here before learning of his great-uncle's assassination.

The ruins are extensive, photogenic, and almost entirely unvisited by the crowds that fill other Mediterranean archaeological sites. A small but well-curated museum on site provides context.

Albania's heritage sites share one thing: they are unhurried. There are no queue management systems, no timed entry slots, no crowds jostling for the famous view. Just the ruins, the history, and the time to think about what you are looking at. It is, increasingly, a rare thing.