I went to Tirana, capital of Albania, expecting nothing in particular and ended up loving it so much I went back six months later.
It's a weird city to describe because the things that make it good aren't really the sights. There's no single thing you go there for the way you go to Rome for the Colosseum. You go, you eat a lot, you stay out too late, you make friends for life, you accidentally learn a bunch of Albanian history you weren't expecting to learn. That's kind of it. And somehow that's more than enough.
I'll tell you what I actually did, which is not the same as a comprehensive guide. I missed things. I'm sure of it.
I nearly didn't go to this because the name sounds like a tourist trap. "Albanian Night." Come on. But my friend who'd been to Tirana twice told me I was being an idiot so I booked it, and she was right, I was being an idiot and almost missed one of the best things to do in Tirana.
Here's the setup. It's held in this reconstructed Albanian village house near the center of Tirana -- not a restaurant, not a theater, an actual room built to look like a traditional domestic interior, low ceiling, specific furniture, the whole thing. When you arrive they give you traditional Albanian clothes to put on, which I expected to feel goofy and somehow didn't, partly because while you're getting dressed they're explaining what everything means. The different parts of the outfit communicated real things -- where you were from, your family's standing, your region. That explanation leads into the Kanun, which is this ancient Northern Albanian code of conduct (laws, social rules, hospitality obligations, how disputes got handled, all of it) that I'd literally never heard of before that night and now feel like I can't stop thinking about honestly.
Then there's dancing. The Valle, which are circle dances, and they do a wedding recreation which sounds cheesy and wasn't, and then there's this singing -- Iso Polyphonia, UNESCO heritage, these harmonics that don't sound like anything Western, I don't know how to describe it except that it made the hair on my arms stand up and I was not expecting that. In a room with maybe 60 people? 80 max I think they said.
You're not just watching. You participate. They pull you into the dancing and somehow that works too.
There's a version with dinner -- full meal, dishes from different Albanian regions -- and if you have the stomach for it after traveling I'd do that version. The base show is worth it regardless and is one of the best things to do in Tirana hands down.
Anyway. albaniannight.com. Just go.
Blloku is the neighborhood where everything happens at night -- all the bars, cafes, restaurants, clubs, everything. But before you just treat it as a going-out district, the history is worth knowing.
During the communist period under Hoxha (who ran Albania in a way that made other communist governments look relaxed, genuinely, the country was sealed off from basically the entire world including other communist countries for a while), Blloku was a closed neighborhood. Ordinary Albanians couldn't go in. The party leadership lived there. Full stop, no entry.
When it opened after 1991 that wasn't just a normal urban development. The people who were alive then remember what it meant. Now it's where you get your macchiato and go out on Friday nights and the two things just coexist without much comment, which is either profound or just the normal way cities work, I honestly can't decide.
I spent a lot of time in Blloku just sitting in cafes. More than I planned to. Albanian coffee culture is -- look, they take it seriously in a specific way where the point is not to consume caffeine quickly and leave. You order a macchiato (that's the standard order), you sit, you talk or read or just exist, and nobody wants you to go anywhere. The cafes fill up around 10am and stay full all afternoon. I think I sat in one place for two hours once and felt genuinely no guilt about it by the end. That took some adjusting coming from London.
Okay I should have mentioned this first probably. The House of Leaves is the former headquarters of the Sigurimi -- that's the secret police -- specifically the surveillance operation. Wiretapping, monitoring, the whole infrastructure of watching everyone all the time. It's a museum now.
It's the best museum I've been to in years. Not the most beautiful, not the biggest. The best, because it's specific in a way most museums aren't. It doesn't say "the surveillance state was bad" and move on. It shows you the equipment. The filing systems. The org charts. Who authorized surveillance on whom. The bureaucratic paperwork of it. You come out understanding how it actually worked rather than just that it existed, which is a different thing entirely.
Give it two hours. Read everything. Don't rush it.
(Skanderbeg Square is fine. There's a mosque on the edge of it called the Et'hem Bey Mosque that's worth going inside, the frescoes are unusual. But if you're short on time skip the square, you can see a big square anywhere.)
Albanian food is so good and nobody talks about it and it drives me a bit crazy.
Fergesa. Start there. Clay pot, peppers and tomatoes cooked down together, arrives still bubbling at the table. It's the Tirana dish specifically, not really a thing elsewhere in the same way. Order it everywhere that has it on the menu, the variation between restaurants is interesting once you've had it a few times.
Byrek is the other one. Flaky pastry, filled with spinach, available basically all hours at bakeries. It's breakfast. It's also the thing you eat at midnight outside a bakery because you've been wandering around for five hours. Finding a good byrek bakery in the first few hours of arriving is genuinely worth the effort -- quality varies a lot and a bad one is really noticeably bad.
Rakia I should mention. Grape spirit, quality range is enormous (enormous), don't just accept whatever's poured, ask what it is. I had one glass of something a guy gave me at a small restaurant outside the center that I think about regularly. I have no idea what it was.
There's also good wine, actually. Albanian wine doesn't have much of a reputation outside Albania but there are some genuinely good reds from the Sheshi i Zi grape, which I'm probably mispronouncing but whatever. Ask a local what they'd drink.
Later than you think. That's the main thing to know. Restaurants are still filling seats at 11pm. If you show up to a club at 11 expecting it to be busy it will not be busy yet. Midnight is when things start, later for the clubs that are actually clubs.
All concentrated in Blloku, which I already mentioned. Cheap by most European city standards. Good energy on weekends. I'm not really a club person so I spent most of my nights in bars and can't give you a thorough accounting of the club scene but the bars were excellent.
The centre is small and walkable. Almost everything I've described is within maybe 20 minutes on foot.
There's a cable car on the eastern edge of the city up to Mount Dajti -- about 1,600 meters I think, maybe a bit less -- and on a clear day the views are legitimately good. Nice to get out of the city heat in summer too, it's noticeably cooler up there.
Speaking of summer: July and August are hot. Like, properly hot in a way that makes wandering around at 2pm fairly miserable. The city empties a bit because Albanians head to the coast (Durres, mainly, half an hour away). Evenings are still good. But honestly if you have flexibility, May or September. Better weather and the city is more itself somehow.
Don't go for just a day. I know people do. They always say they want to go back for longer. Just go for longer from the start.
Oh -- cash. Bring some! Smaller bars and restaurants often won't take cards and there's nothing more annoying than being caught out at the end of the night.
I'll tell you what I actually did, which is not the same as a comprehensive guide. I missed things. I'm sure of it.
The Albanian Night Show, Which I Almost Skipped
I nearly didn't go to this because the name sounds like a tourist trap. "Albanian Night." Come on. But my friend who'd been to Tirana twice told me I was being an idiot so I booked it, and she was right, I was being an idiot and almost missed one of the best things to do in Tirana.
Here's the setup. It's held in this reconstructed Albanian village house near the center of Tirana -- not a restaurant, not a theater, an actual room built to look like a traditional domestic interior, low ceiling, specific furniture, the whole thing. When you arrive they give you traditional Albanian clothes to put on, which I expected to feel goofy and somehow didn't, partly because while you're getting dressed they're explaining what everything means. The different parts of the outfit communicated real things -- where you were from, your family's standing, your region. That explanation leads into the Kanun, which is this ancient Northern Albanian code of conduct (laws, social rules, hospitality obligations, how disputes got handled, all of it) that I'd literally never heard of before that night and now feel like I can't stop thinking about honestly.
Then there's dancing. The Valle, which are circle dances, and they do a wedding recreation which sounds cheesy and wasn't, and then there's this singing -- Iso Polyphonia, UNESCO heritage, these harmonics that don't sound like anything Western, I don't know how to describe it except that it made the hair on my arms stand up and I was not expecting that. In a room with maybe 60 people? 80 max I think they said.
You're not just watching. You participate. They pull you into the dancing and somehow that works too.
There's a version with dinner -- full meal, dishes from different Albanian regions -- and if you have the stomach for it after traveling I'd do that version. The base show is worth it regardless and is one of the best things to do in Tirana hands down.
Anyway. albaniannight.com. Just go.
Things I Kept Getting Distracted By In Blloku
Blloku is the neighborhood where everything happens at night -- all the bars, cafes, restaurants, clubs, everything. But before you just treat it as a going-out district, the history is worth knowing.
During the communist period under Hoxha (who ran Albania in a way that made other communist governments look relaxed, genuinely, the country was sealed off from basically the entire world including other communist countries for a while), Blloku was a closed neighborhood. Ordinary Albanians couldn't go in. The party leadership lived there. Full stop, no entry.
When it opened after 1991 that wasn't just a normal urban development. The people who were alive then remember what it meant. Now it's where you get your macchiato and go out on Friday nights and the two things just coexist without much comment, which is either profound or just the normal way cities work, I honestly can't decide.
I spent a lot of time in Blloku just sitting in cafes. More than I planned to. Albanian coffee culture is -- look, they take it seriously in a specific way where the point is not to consume caffeine quickly and leave. You order a macchiato (that's the standard order), you sit, you talk or read or just exist, and nobody wants you to go anywhere. The cafes fill up around 10am and stay full all afternoon. I think I sat in one place for two hours once and felt genuinely no guilt about it by the end. That took some adjusting coming from London.
The House of Leaves (Don't Skip This)
Okay I should have mentioned this first probably. The House of Leaves is the former headquarters of the Sigurimi -- that's the secret police -- specifically the surveillance operation. Wiretapping, monitoring, the whole infrastructure of watching everyone all the time. It's a museum now.
It's the best museum I've been to in years. Not the most beautiful, not the biggest. The best, because it's specific in a way most museums aren't. It doesn't say "the surveillance state was bad" and move on. It shows you the equipment. The filing systems. The org charts. Who authorized surveillance on whom. The bureaucratic paperwork of it. You come out understanding how it actually worked rather than just that it existed, which is a different thing entirely.
Give it two hours. Read everything. Don't rush it.
(Skanderbeg Square is fine. There's a mosque on the edge of it called the Et'hem Bey Mosque that's worth going inside, the frescoes are unusual. But if you're short on time skip the square, you can see a big square anywhere.)
Food, Because This Is Actually Why I Went Back
Albanian food is so good and nobody talks about it and it drives me a bit crazy.
Fergesa. Start there. Clay pot, peppers and tomatoes cooked down together, arrives still bubbling at the table. It's the Tirana dish specifically, not really a thing elsewhere in the same way. Order it everywhere that has it on the menu, the variation between restaurants is interesting once you've had it a few times.
Byrek is the other one. Flaky pastry, filled with spinach, available basically all hours at bakeries. It's breakfast. It's also the thing you eat at midnight outside a bakery because you've been wandering around for five hours. Finding a good byrek bakery in the first few hours of arriving is genuinely worth the effort -- quality varies a lot and a bad one is really noticeably bad.
Rakia I should mention. Grape spirit, quality range is enormous (enormous), don't just accept whatever's poured, ask what it is. I had one glass of something a guy gave me at a small restaurant outside the center that I think about regularly. I have no idea what it was.
There's also good wine, actually. Albanian wine doesn't have much of a reputation outside Albania but there are some genuinely good reds from the Sheshi i Zi grape, which I'm probably mispronouncing but whatever. Ask a local what they'd drink.
The Nightlife Thing, Briefly
Later than you think. That's the main thing to know. Restaurants are still filling seats at 11pm. If you show up to a club at 11 expecting it to be busy it will not be busy yet. Midnight is when things start, later for the clubs that are actually clubs.
All concentrated in Blloku, which I already mentioned. Cheap by most European city standards. Good energy on weekends. I'm not really a club person so I spent most of my nights in bars and can't give you a thorough accounting of the club scene but the bars were excellent.
Logistics Stuff
The centre is small and walkable. Almost everything I've described is within maybe 20 minutes on foot.
There's a cable car on the eastern edge of the city up to Mount Dajti -- about 1,600 meters I think, maybe a bit less -- and on a clear day the views are legitimately good. Nice to get out of the city heat in summer too, it's noticeably cooler up there.
Speaking of summer: July and August are hot. Like, properly hot in a way that makes wandering around at 2pm fairly miserable. The city empties a bit because Albanians head to the coast (Durres, mainly, half an hour away). Evenings are still good. But honestly if you have flexibility, May or September. Better weather and the city is more itself somehow.
Don't go for just a day. I know people do. They always say they want to go back for longer. Just go for longer from the start.
Oh -- cash. Bring some! Smaller bars and restaurants often won't take cards and there's nothing more annoying than being caught out at the end of the night.
(Photo credit: Mario Beqollari)
