Albania

About Albania
Europe's Best Kept Secret

Albania is Europe's most exciting travel secret — a country that spent decades behind one of the world's most isolated communist regimes and has emerged to reveal a coastline that rivals Croatia, mountains that rival Switzerland, and prices that make it comfortably the best value destination on the continent. Travellers who discover it early feel like they've unlocked something the rest of the world hasn't caught onto yet.

The Albanian Riviera stretches for miles along the Ionian Sea, with brilliant turquoise water, unspoilt shingle coves, and a distinct lack of the crowds that have overtaken neighbouring Greece and Croatia. Inland, Ottoman-era towns like Berat — the "City of a Thousand Windows" — and Gjirokaster offer extraordinary UNESCO-listed architecture at virtually no entrance cost. The Accursed Mountains in the north, crossed by the legendary Peaks of the Balkans trail, offer some of the most dramatic trekking scenery in all of Europe.

Tirana itself is a surprisingly vibrant capital: colourful painted buildings commissioned after communism fell, a growing café and bar scene built around the Blloku district, and a youthful energy that feels electric. Albania is the destination for the traveller who wants to feel what discovering a place truly means — before the crowds arrive.