Start at the castle for the ramparts, the clock tower and the arms museum in the old prison cells, then walk down into the bazaar for lunch. Give the afternoon to two of the tower houses, Zekate and Skënduli, and to the Cold War tunnel under the main square. Antigonea, Libohovë and the Blue Eye fill a second day, but only with a car.
Gjirokastër climbs a slope above the Drino in slate and grey stone, an Ottoman town of tower houses under a fortress that ran as a prison until 1968. It is small enough to walk in a day and layered enough to hold you for two.
The first walls went up in the 12th or 13th century and Ali Pasha finished the job, adding the ramparts, the clock tower and an aqueduct. A run of regimes used it as a prison until 1968, and the arms museum now fills those cells.
Slate roofs, craft workshops and a mosque of 1757 at the head of the slope. This is the old town’s centre and the one part of Gjirokastër that fills in the evening, when the cafes put chairs out on the cobbles.
Twin towers, an arcaded front and a frescoed reception room on the top floor, completed in 1811 for an official under Ali Pasha. It is the most ambitious of the tower houses and the one that explains all the others.
Dug in secret in the early 1970s: 800 metres of corridor and 59 rooms meant to hold the district’s officials through an invasion or a nuclear strike. It has been left bare rather than dressed as a museum.
Built in 1966 on the site of Enver Hoxha’s birth house and furnished as a 19th-century Gjirokastër home: working rooms below, the summer reception above, cupboards cut into the walls. Nothing inside is about Hoxha.
An 18th-century tower house back in the hands of the family that owned it, and shown by them. Less restored than Zekate and better for it: you get the chimneys, the hiding places and the reasoning behind both.
Ismail Kadare was born here in 1936, in a house of 1799 that burned and was rebuilt. The museum is arranged around Chronicle in Stone, his novel of this town under Italian and then German occupation.
One stone span above the Dunavat roofs is all that survives of the channel Ali Pasha built in 1812 to carry water 10 km from Mount Sopot to the castle cisterns. The walk out gives the best view back at the town.
Pyrrhus of Epirus founded this city in 295 BC and named it for his wife Antigone. Four kilometres of wall, a street grid and mosaics sit along a ridge 14 km east, with the whole Drino valley laid out below.
Built in 1757 at the head of the bazaar, and one of the few mosques in Albania left standing when the state closed religious buildings in 1967. Stone wash fountains line the street outside it.
A 1966 rebuild on Enver Hoxha’s birth site, furnished as a 19th-century town house.
Two houses of 1885 and 1887, restored in 2013 as a heritage centre and hostel.
Inside the castle, in the cells of the prison that closed in 1968.
Top of the bazaar in an old market building, known for byrek and baked veal.
Masons work the same limestone that roofs the town into pieces you can carry.
Karst spring 34 km toward the coast, the water rising cold and very blue.
Greek, Roman, Venetian and Ottoman layers on a lagoon, World Heritage since 1992.
Thermal pools beside an Ottoman bridge on the Lengarica, 13 km from Përmet.
Built by Ali Pasha in the 1790s, by tradition for his sister Shanisha.
A national holiday marking the end of winter, fixed to the same date across Albania.
Bektashi new year and a public holiday. Gjirokastër keeps a tekke in the Dunavat quarter.
The Argjiro foundation stages traditional and classical music inside the castle walls.
Young Albanian bands at the castle, the loud counterpart to the folklore festival.
About a thousand performers at the castle, iso-polyphonic choirs included. Last held in 2023.
The town marks its 1944 liberation with wreaths at the memorials and a concert at the castle.
Albania’s 1912 declaration of independence, followed by Liberation Day on 29 November.
Çerçiz Topulli square takes a winter market, food stalls and the switching on of the tree.
Tirana International Airport is the practical gateway, about 230 km north and roughly four hours by road. Corfu and Ioannina are the alternatives on the Greek side.
Furgons and coaches use stops either side of the roundabout below the old town rather than a station, running north to Tirana and south to Saranda and the Kakavijë border.
The old town sits well above the new one on steep cobbles. Taxis run up to the castle and into Palorto, which is how to see the tower houses without the climb.
The valley road from Tepelenë to the Greek border at Kakavijë passes the town, and it is the only sensible way to reach Antigonea, Libohovë and the Zagoria villages.
Rice, egg and mint rolled into balls and cooked in a dimpled pan. Made nowhere else.
Meatballs poached in a thickened rice soup, the town’s best-known plate after qifqi.
Cornmeal baked with wild sorrel, a spring dish that arrives with the greens.
Spinach pie in thin pastry, sold by the slice in the bazaar.
Vine leaves, or courgette flowers in season, stuffed with rice and mint.
Dried figs stewed in sheep’s milk and served cold. The local dessert.
Hard yellow and soft white cheeses from the flocks on the mountains above.
Mountain tea gathered on the ridges, drunk in the bazaar tea houses.
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