Albania has quietly become one of the Mediterranean’s most talked-about property markets — and for good reason. With more than 450 km of coastline, over 300 days of sunshine a year, and prices still well below neighbouring Greece, Croatia and Italy, it offers something that has almost disappeared from Western Europe: an affordable seaside home…
Albania’s tax system is one of its quiet attractions for foreigners: a generous tax-free band, a remarkable 0% regime for small businesses and freelancers through 2029, untaxed foreign pensions and a one-year exemption for digital nomads. But “low tax” comes with rules — chiefly the 183-day tax-residency line — and a few traps (notably for…
One week is the sweet spot for a first trip to Albania — enough to pair two UNESCO old towns with the turquoise coast and a mountain pass, without spending the whole holiday behind the wheel. This 7-day itinerary loops from Tirana through Berat and Gjirokastër down to the southern beaches and the Riviera, then…
Saranda (Sarandë) is the beating heart of the Albanian Riviera — a lively coastal city curled around a horseshoe bay, gazing across the water at the Greek island of Corfu. It’s where most travellers base themselves to explore southern Albania, and with good reason: from here you’re minutes from the Blue Eye and the beaches…
With its powder-white sand, calm turquoise shallows and a cluster of tiny islands just offshore, Ksamil has earned its nickname as the “Maldives of Europe.” Sitting at the southern tip of the Albanian Riviera, this once-sleepy village is now Albania’s most famous beach destination — and for good reason. This guide covers the best beaches,…
Few places in Albania look as unreal as the Blue Eye. A deep sapphire “pupil” ringed by glowing turquoise, fed by ice-cold water surging up from a cave so deep no one has ever reached the bottom — it’s one of southern Albania’s most photographed natural wonders, and an easy half-day trip from the coast….
Tumbling down a mountainside in a cascade of grey slate roofs, Gjirokastër is one of Albania’s most atmospheric towns — a UNESCO-listed “City of Stone” where Ottoman mansions, a vast hilltop fortress and cobbled bazaar streets sit layered over a turbulent modern history. Many travellers blast past it on the way to the coast; those…
Cascading up two hillsides above a turquoise river, Berat is one of Albania’s most photogenic towns — a UNESCO World Heritage site where tiers of white Ottoman houses, each studded with rows of windows, climb toward a castle that people still call home. Nicknamed the “City of a Thousand Windows,” Berat packs over two millennia…
Tucked into a green valley deep in the Accursed Mountains, Theth is the jewel of the Albanian Alps — a remote stone village of slate-roofed houses, waterfalls and a famous mountain pass that draws hikers from across the world. Once almost impossible to reach, Theth is now a short drive from Shkodër thanks to a…
If there’s one journey that turns up on every northern Albania itinerary, it’s the Lake Koman ferry. For about three hours, a boat winds through a flooded river canyon where sheer mountains drop straight into still, jade-green water — a landscape people regularly compare to the fjords of Norway or the rivers of Southeast Asia….