War paints of Albania: Where time is frozen in stone

Almost no one knows anything about this country right in the south eastern part of Europe. It's small, it's sunny, it has beaches, mountains and friendly people, nice things to eat and wine and beer too.

We try to discover Albania, a small ghost under the all the nations on earth. By feet, of course, to have some adventures in Albania on mysterious ways - on rocky paths and empty places to the balcony of the Balkan.

It wasn't too long ago that travel to the Balkans was only for the very brave. And only the craziest among them dared to go to Albania, a small state on the Adriatic Sea that was sealed off from the whole world like North Korea nowadays in the decades after World War II. No one was allowed in, no one was allowed out.

The house where Enver Hoxha was born, with fan shop

That has changed in the meantime. But still the country with its population of not even three million is a piece of mysterious terra incognita in the middle of Europe. Part 1 of the story is here, part two here, three here and four. Please read if you like!

A street in the old town

After four days in the middle of nowhere in Albania, we desperately need a break. Get out of your hiking boots and into civilization, which lies directly behind seven mountains. Fortunately, it is not far from Qeparo to Gjirokaster, a true metropolis by Albanian standards.

The castle

The city is - surprise! - part of the UNESCO World Heritage, a city in the middle of the mountains with a huge castle, beautiful houses and a breathtaking panorama, which also has a lot of surprises in store: memories of times long forgotten. And of events that nobody outside of the country on the Adriatic, which has been strictly isolated for many decades, has noticed.

View from the hill

Never heared name

Gjirokaster? Nobody who was not born in Albania has probably not even heard the name before. Gjirokastra is located in southern Albania in the Drino river valley, which widens here to the Dropull plain. A city of stone, stacked up over many centuries. The older quarters of the city are on the steep slope of the Mali i Gjerë at up to 480 meters above sea level.

Enver Hoxha on a bag

Newer parts of the city descend to the small commercial areas on the riverbank at 190 meters above sea level. Greece is not far, only 36 kilometers from the border with the neighboring country. But the distance here is not measured in kilometers, but in centuries.

One of the old town castles

Because in Gjirokastra time has stood still. Because Albania was something of a European North Korea during the many years of communist rule under the dictator Enver Hoxha, cut off from the whole world, which the ruler suspected of wanting to attack the tiny patch of land on the Adriatic Sea at any moment you can find here the remnants of the distant past of Greek and Turkish rule with the building sins of the communists and the feeble attempts to catch up after the collapse of the dictatorial regime, which had been neglected for all these years.

A cannon  shown in the underground of the castle

Cool down the days

The climate in Gjirokastra and throughout the valley is Mediterranean-continental, with winters here, locals say, are cold and rainy, while summers are warm and incredibly dry. There is also wind that comes from the mountains and cools you down on a good day. Centuries ago, people found this so beautiful and pleasant that they settled here.

The door way to the place where Princess Argjiro jumped down

According to the tax records of 1431/32, Argiri, as the city was called in Turkish, had a total of 163 houses, by 1583 this had tripled. Farmers in particular came from the mountains, where it is still difficult to make ends meet to live in the city instead. In 1670 the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi counted over 2.000 houses. In his travel book, the Seyahatnâme, he described the city in detail.

Remains of the communist era: heroes made of metal

At first glance, it still looks impressive today like to his time. Pressed against a mountain whose imposing peaks rise to 1.800 meters, the town with its narrow streets clinging to the slope, towered over by the fortress, which was expanded by Tepedelenli Ali Pasha at the beginning of the 19th century after he took the town under his dominion incorporated. It didn't help much, because ten years later Sultan Mahmud II took Gjirokastra away from him again - although Ali Pasha had already been murdered by then.

The castle and the town

The people of Gjirokastra will tell you that the castle is closely tied to the legend of Princess Argjiro. As the story goes, Princess Argjiro was the sister of ruler Gjin Zenebishi when the castle was taken by Ottoman invaders in the 15th century. Refusing to surrender, Argjiro took her baby and ran to this point on the castle walls.

The USAF T-33A from 1952

From here, she leapt to her death. Miraculously, Argjiro's child survived, and where Argjiro fell, milk flowed from the rocks to feed her baby. A geological feature seems to confirm the story - at the foot of the castle walls, the limestone cliffs are covered in white calcium deposits.

A tank thats seems it was used thousand years ago

A land of endless wars

There was always war here, a little bit. Once the Greeks who live here declared themselves autonomous. Albanians took back their country and the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus fell as quickly as it arose. And a little later the Italians came and took up quarters in Gjirokastra in order to march from here to Greece.

USAF T-33A, an Albanian trophy 

A stupid plan, because the Greeks launched a counter-offensive and took Gjirokastra in early December 1940. Only when the Germans intervened were the Italians allowed to govern again, when they overthrew their dictator Mussolini, the Germans themselves took over - until Enver Hoxha, a child of Gjirokaster, seized power for communists and proclaimed the People's Socialist Republic of Albania.

The old town looks like in old times

The dictator loves his hometown

During the city's socialist history, industrialization set in and Gjirokastra became a supra-regional trading center. Luckily for Gjirokaster, Hoxha probably harbored deeper feelings for his hometown, because while all other towns were being ruthlessly modernized, he declared it a "museum town" in 1961. Everything was allowed to stay as it was. Houses stacked from Setin blocks with the yards demarcated. The streets. The birthplace of the cult leader, which can still be visited today.

The casemates of the fortress

Since the collapse of the communist regime at the beginning of the 1990s, the city, like the whole of Albania, has suffered from heavy emigration. Many houses are empty, there is a lot of decay, but also carefully restored mosques, new playgrounds and newly paved streets. When serious and bloody anti-government riots broke out in 1997, Gjirokastra bathed in violence. Permanent damage but cannot be seen - and in 2005 UNESCO declared the historic center of Gjirokastra a World Heritage Site.

The muzzle of a Italian cannon

A place for tourists

Since then the tourists have been coming, not many, but better than nothing. Hotels and restaurants emerged, travel agencies offer trips to the mountains and to the famous Blue Eye spring. One attraction is the "Kalaja" fortress above the town - the name means nothing more than that: fortress.

More cannons from more wars

You climb steeply for a long, long time, but then you not only see a military museum with various rusty weapons ready for scrap, but also an American fighter plane in the outdoor area, which the Albanian Air Force took out of the sky in 1952, as the Albanians proudly tell.

  The reality is a little different: The USAF T-33A was never shot down

A fairy tale, albeit an exciting one. The reality is a little different: The USAF T-33A with the serial number 51-4413 had to make an emergency landing at the Kuçova military airfield in Albania on December 23, 1957 because it went off course on a transfer flight from France to Naples.

  But in the Internet the plane is very famous for his legend

The fuel ran out and technical difficulties arose, so that the pilot Major Howard J. Curran decided to make an emergency landing in a country that professed to be an open enemy of the USA. The officer was interned for a full six years. Curran was only released in January 1958. But his plane, or at least what's left of it, still stands at Gjirokastra Castle today.

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A few more pictures for you:

Prophets and sultans are lying here, side by side

Deep in the casemattes

A night view to the castle

Gjirokaster is beloved by tourists, but you will never seen some

Down there is the city

Up is the castle

The mosque is being renovated

Some houses are waiting for renovation

Another view

A castle in the city

Renovation ahead

The central place of the castle

Take a souvenir

360°

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