Albania: once and future glories
Albania: once and future glories
Albania is rich in ancient ruins that could pave the way to prosperity for the country's burgeoning tourist industry, writes Jeremy Seal.
On a promontory high above the Vjose river valley, among olive trees and turban-topped Dervish graves, we came to the ruins of Byllis. We explored the city's stout Roman walls, its agora, theatre and bathhouse, and pottered about the column-strewn foundations of late-antique basilicas. Glimpses of mosaic – a figure milking a goat, or feeding a hunting dog – hinted at the magnificent pavements beneath the protective covering of sand.
It might have frustrated us that – this being Albania – such mosaics could not be displayed for lack of funds. Even so, lunching at a nearby restaurant on pork chops sprinkled with oregano and washed down with a robust local wine, the overall feeling was exhilaration that we had the place – restaurant, view, archaeological site and even, it sometimes seemed, the entire oddball country – all to ourselves.
Albania's abundant archaeology has been recognised since the likes of Lord Byron and Edward Lear discovered this atmospheric Balkan backwater in the 19th century. Even in the 1980s, with the country deep in communist isolation, Westerners holidaying on adjacent Greek Corfu returned bright-eyed and tantalised after day visits to the evocative coastal site at Butrint.
Much of the credit must fall to archaeology tour specialist Andante – one of only two British operators currently featuring the country – and its guide lecturer, Butrint-based archaeologist Oliver Gilkes, who is steeped in Albanian culture and history. Gilkes took us to barely visited sites like the hillside fortifications in the Selo Valley, the domed monastery church at Mesopotam, and the remarkably preserved theatre at Hadrianopolis.
He also showed a knack for turning up memorable cameos from Albanian life, leading us to the restaurant in the Greek-speaking village of Terihat just as a gathering of 30 family and friends, arranged in exact order of seniority, joined in a haunting polyphonic chant to celebrate the 80th birthday of the village man at the table head.
In the government-designated "museum city" of Berat, handsome stuccoed merchants' houses perched above the river, and white beards read their Korans in the late-Ottoman mosques. Bats stirred the dank air in the crag-top citadel's cavernous cistern, and a display collection of exquisite icons by medieval master painters including Onufri, known for the shade of red particular to his work, adorned the nearby St Mary church.
From the window of my room at the faded Tomori, I admired the town square's vehicle assortment – bicycles and a horse-drawn cart, dodgem cars and a period-piece steam roller rusting in a parking space, flanked by shiny Mercedes – before retiring to read by the bare light of a ceiling bulb. My wake-up call took the form of a sharp rap on the door, and for a moment I was back in this hotel's communist heyday.
And so to Byliss, a site barely known beyond Albania, though the approach road through the Mallakaster Hills proved more a reminder of Albanian dereliction. There were rusting oil derricks, blighted housing blocks, abandoned factory buildings and state farms. Written-off cars were stacked at the roadside and unfinished concrete constructions rose alongside the country's 700,000 communist-era concrete bunkers. To the first rule of archaeology – that structural condition is what distinguishes ancient sites from modern buildings – Albania may just prove the exception.
But not always. Where the road led into the mountains and over the Muzinë Pass, we were suddenly among meadows and forests of walnut trees where stone churches perched on picturesque crags. A spring known as Syri I Kalter (the Blue Eye) rises to pool among a glade of plane trees (before flowing on to feed a hydro-electric station formerly named after Stalin).
At the isthmus site of Butrint, where we wandered from the Classical theatre and the columned sixth-century baptistery to the 17th-century forts of the Venetians, it was as if every age had left its mark. We circumvented the momentous walls and climbed through a gateway to picnic on fruit and savoury pastries in the grounds of the superbly displayed museum.
The armaments museum at Gjirokastër, where they had not got round to dismantling the communist propaganda, had an appeal all of its own.
Grim cell blocks remembered the torment meted out by King Zog's imperialists, while a statue showed Mother Albania extending an authoritative finger to banish cringing representations of fascism and religion from the country. An American jet, forced down by the communists in 1957, mouldered on an outer terrace.
Elsewhere, however, visible efforts were being made to save the town, a World Heritage Site since 2005. Gjirokastër possesses a unique stock of late-Ottoman mansions which are now crumbling beneath the weight of poverty, neglect and massive stone roofs.
Elenita, a young woman from the town's conservation office, led us round the recently restored Zekate House where the painted family rooms and walnut wood screens, ornate ceilings and high balconies evoked the one-time decorousness of provincial life in this far-flung corner of empire.
The likes of Elenita, who proved more communicative and capable than many of her communist-moulded elders, suggested the human potential was there to save Gjirokastër, and hinted at a brighter Alabanian future. Tourists would help, too. And when a queue of buses disgorged hundreds of cruise-ship passengers near the great concrete plinth which had once been home to the statue of Enver Hoxha, Gjirokastër-born Communist tyrant, it was clear that a great many people – Elenita and Oliver Gilkes among them – were very happy indeed to see them.
Essentials
Andante Travels (01722 713800; www.andantetravels.co.uk) offers nine-day Albania tours in May and October at an all-inclusive cost of £1,850 per person.
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