Albania, the undiscovered gem of the Mediterranean

Start with the basics

Where is Albania? A complete introduction, from someone who lives here

Most people have heard the name and could not tell you where to find it. Albania sits in Southeastern Europe, on the western edge of the Balkan Peninsula, with a long coastline on the Adriatic and Ionian seas. It faces Italy across the water, shares land borders with Greece, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro, and packs an improbable amount of coastline, mountains and history into a country smaller than Belgium. After almost four years living here in Durrës, on that very coast, I have watched it go from a place friends had to look up on a map to one of the fastest-growing destinations in Europe.

This is the plain-English starting point: where the country is, what the capital and currency are, what time it is, who lives here, and where to go next depending on whether you are planning a holiday or a move. Everything deeper, the visas, the budgets, the routes, the property, lives in the guides linked throughout, all written from the ground and kept current.

Where exactly is Albania located?

If you want the precise answer to “where is Albania located”, picture the boot of Italy and slide your eye east across the Adriatic Sea. Albania is the country on the far shore, occupying a strip of the western Balkans between the mountains and the water. To the north it borders Montenegro and, inland, Kosovo. To the east lies North Macedonia, and to the south, Greece. Its western and southwestern flank is all coast: the Adriatic Sea in the north, the Ionian Sea in the south, with the narrow Strait of Otranto separating it from the Italian region of Puglia by only around 72 kilometres at the closest point.

That position explains a great deal about the country. For centuries it sat on the fault line between empires, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, Ottoman, and you can still read that layered history in the architecture of towns like Berat and Gjirokastër. In practical terms today, it means Albania is genuinely easy to reach. There are direct flights from most major European hubs into Tirana, ferries from the Italian ports of Bari and Brindisi into Durrës and Vlorë, and land crossings from all four neighbours. You can be on an Albanian beach a couple of hours after leaving Rome, Vienna or Athens, which is a big part of why the country works so well for a long weekend as much as a long stay.

The territory covers roughly 28,750 square kilometres, which makes it small, comparable to Belgium or the American state of Maryland, but the density of things to see inside those borders is what surprises people. You can drive from an Ottoman-era stone city to a turquoise beach to a glacial alpine valley inside a single day.

The landscape: mountains, coast and lakes

Albania is a mountainous country. Around 70 percent of it is hills and mountains, and the ranges are not gentle. In the far north stand the Albanian Alps, known locally and evocatively as the Accursed Mountains (Bjeshkët e Nemuna), a wall of limestone peaks, glacial valleys and remote stone villages that has become the heart of the country’s growing hiking scene. The highest point in Albania, Mount Korab at 2,764 metres, sits on the eastern border with North Macedonia.

Running down the southwest is the Albanian Riviera, the stretch of Ionian coast between Vlorë and Sarandë where the mountains drop almost straight into clear water. This is the postcard Albania: pebble coves, white-sand beaches around Ksamil, and villages like Dhërmi and Himarë clinging to the slopes above. Inland, the country is dotted with lakes, including Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa on the eastern borders, both among the oldest lakes in the world, and Lake Shkodër in the north, the largest lake in Southern Europe. It is a lot of variety for a country this size, and it is the single biggest reason the tourism numbers have climbed the way they have.

The capital

The capital of Albania: Tirana

The capital of Albania is Tirana, a city of around half a million people in the centre of the country, and it is almost certainly where your trip will begin. Tirana is the political, economic and cultural heart of Albania, home to the main international airport (Tirana International Airport, also called Rinas or Mother Teresa Airport), and it has transformed dramatically over the past two decades. Grey communist-era blocks were famously painted in bright colours by a former mayor, and the city today is a lively mix of Ottoman remnants, socialist monuments, leafy boulevards and a café culture that runs from early morning to late at night. Skanderbeg Square at its centre is the reference point for the whole country.

Tirana is not the only city worth knowing, though. Durrës, where I live, is the country’s main port and one of its oldest cities, founded by the Greeks over 2,600 years ago and home to a Roman amphitheatre right in the middle of town. Vlorë, further south, is where Albania declared its independence in 1912 and marks the gateway to the Riviera. Shkodër in the north is the cultural capital of the region and the jumping-off point for the Alps. Sarandë sits opposite the Greek island of Corfu and anchors the southern coast, while the UNESCO-listed towns of Berat and Gjirokastër preserve the stone-and-timber architecture of the Ottoman centuries. Between them, these cities cover most of what draws people here, and each one has its own dedicated guide on this site.

Money

The currency of Albania: the lek

The currency of Albania is the Albanian lek, abbreviated ALL and often written with the symbol L after the amount. It is not the euro, and Albania is not in the Eurozone, which trips up a lot of first-time visitors who assume that a European beach destination must use euros. In shops, restaurants and markets, prices are quoted in lek. One useful quirk to know is that Albanians will sometimes quote prices in “old lek”, an informal habit left over from a currency revaluation, so a figure that sounds ten times too high usually is exactly that. When in doubt, ask.

That said, the euro is widely accepted in practice, especially in tourist areas, hotels and for larger transactions like rent. Property listings and long-term rentals are very often priced in euros rather than lek. Cards work fine in city hotels, supermarkets and mid-range restaurants, and ATMs are easy to find in any town of reasonable size, though many charge a withdrawal fee. Out in the villages, on the coast off-season, in furgons (the shared minibuses), and at small family-run places, cash is still king, and I would never set off along the coast or into the mountains without a decent amount of lek in my pocket. For a full breakdown of what things actually cost, the trip cost guide and the cost of living guide go into real numbers.

The clock

What time is it in Albania?

The time in Albania is Central European Time (CET), which is UTC+1. Like most of Europe, the country observes daylight saving time, shifting to Central European Summer Time (CEST, UTC+2) from late March to late October. In practical terms, that means Albania keeps the same clock as Italy, Germany, France, Austria and most of the continent. It is one hour ahead of the United Kingdom, one hour behind Greece and most of Eastern Europe, and for most of the year one hour behind Kyiv. If you are flying in from Central Europe, there is no jet lag and no clock to reset, which is one more small thing that makes a short trip painless.

The people

The people of Albania

Albania is home to around 2.4 million people. The most recent census, taken in 2023, counted 2,402,113 residents, and that figure tells a story of its own: it is down from about 2.8 million in 2011, a decline of roughly 16 percent driven overwhelmingly by emigration. For decades, Albanians have left in large numbers for Italy, Greece, Germany and beyond in search of work, and the result is a global diaspora that is very nearly as large as the resident population. You feel this everywhere. Almost everyone you meet has family abroad, and it is one reason so many people here speak a second or third language.

The overwhelming majority, around 91 percent, are ethnic Albanians. The largest recognised minority is the Greek community in the south, alongside smaller Macedonian, Montenegrin, Roma, Aromanian and other groups. Albanians call themselves shqiptarë and their country Shqipëria, names tied to the word for the country’s national symbol, the eagle you see on the red flag.

The official language is Albanian, or shqip, and it is one of the more fascinating languages in Europe: an Indo-European language that forms its own branch, related to no other living language, with two main dialects, Gheg in the north and Tosk in the south, which is the basis of the standard written form. It looks daunting on paper, but you do not need it to get by. Italian is very widely understood, a legacy of geography, television and migration, and English is common among younger people and throughout the tourist industry. Learning even a few phrases, though, goes a long way, and the Albanian phrases guide covers the ones that earn the warmest smiles.

Religion in Albania is worth understanding because it defies expectations. The country is majority Muslim, a legacy of five centuries of Ottoman rule, with significant Orthodox and Catholic Christian minorities and a strong presence of the Bektashi order, a liberal Sufi tradition whose world headquarters is in Tirana. What matters far more than the breakdown, though, is the tolerance. Religious identity here tends to sit lightly, intermarriage is common, and people are quietly proud of a coexistence that much of the world could learn from. You will see a mosque, an Orthodox church and a Catholic cathedral within a short walk of each other in most cities.

If there is one thing every visitor remarks on, it is the hospitality. Albanian culture places an almost sacred value on the guest, rooted in the old customary code known as the Kanun and its principle of besa, a word that means something like sacred word of honour and a duty of protection. In everyday life it shows up as generosity that can be genuinely disarming: the coffee that someone insists on paying for, the stranger who walks you to the address instead of pointing, the family that adopts you for an afternoon. Four years in, it still catches me off guard.

Right now

A small country having a very big moment

For most of the twentieth century Albania was closed off from the world. It spent decades under one of the most isolated communist regimes in Europe, sealed shut until the system collapsed in 1991, and it has spent the years since rebuilding and reopening. That recent history is why it still carries the “undiscovered” label, and why it feels, in the best way, like it is a decade behind its neighbours in tourism. If you want the fuller story, the history of Albania guide covers it properly.

The present is a different picture entirely. In 2025 Albania welcomed a record of roughly 12.5 million foreign visitors, more than five times its own population, and the numbers have been climbing year after year as the coast, the mountains and the historic towns draw crowds that used to go to Croatia or Greece. At the same time the country is deep in the process of joining the European Union: it became an official candidate in 2014, opened accession negotiations in 2022, and by 2026 had moved into the concluding phase, with membership realistically targeted for somewhere around the end of the decade. Prices are rising, roads and airports are being built, and the “secret” is very much out. My honest advice, as someone who lives here, is that this is a wonderful time to come, and that the Albania of a few years from now will be a busier and more expensive place than the one you can still catch today.

Start here

Planning a trip, or a move?

If you have got the essentials and you are ready to go deeper, this whole site is built to take you there. Pick your path.

That is exactly why this site exists: to give you clear, current, first-hand answers, whether you are booking a week on the coast or planning a whole new life by the sea. Useful next stops include the best time to visit, the visa and entry rules, an honest take on whether Albania is safe, the getting around guide and the full set of itineraries.

Common questions

Frequently asked questions about Albania