Gjirokastër: Ottoman Tower Houses, a Captured Spy Plane, and Albania's Cold War Underworld

There is a specific sound Gjirokastër makes at dawn, before the tour buses climb up from Saranda: donkeys somewhere below the castle, a coppersmith opening his shutters in the bazaar, and the tap of your own boots on slate that has been polished by four hundred years of other boots. This is the "City of Stone," a town of steep grey roofs stacked along the slope of Mali i Gjerë above the Drino Valley, and it is the most architecturally intact Ottoman city left in the Balkans — UNESCO-listed, vaguely famous, and still strangely half-asleep.

Gjirokastër is also the hometown of the two men who shaped modern Albania more than anyone else: Enver Hoxha, the Stalinist dictator who sealed the country off from the world for four decades, and Ismail Kadare, the novelist who wrote the country's moral conscience into being. Their houses still stand a fifteen-minute walk apart. That tension — beauty and surveillance, stone and secrets — is what makes this small city worth far more than the afternoon most travelers give it.

Come for two nights, minimum. Here is how to spend them.

The Fortress Over the Drino

The castle (kalaja) dominates everything, and the walk up through the old town is half the reward. Entry is 400 lek (about €4), cash only, and the gates open at 9:00 AM — in season (April–September) it stays open until 19:00, in winter until 17:00. Arrive at opening. By 11:00 the cobbles below are a parking lot of Saranda day-trip coaches, and the fortress courtyards, which should feel like a military parade ground gone to grass, feel like an actual parade.

The site's origins run back to the 12th–13th century, when this was a stronghold of the Despotate of Epirus, one of the Byzantine successor states that fought over these mountains after Constantinople fell. But the fortress you see is mostly the work of Ali Pasha of Tepelena, the Ottoman-Albanian ruler who seized control of the region and rebuilt and expanded the castle around 1811, when Gjirokastër was effectively the capital of his mini-empire. He ran his administration from up here; later, the castle's vaulted galleries served as a prison first under King Zog and then under the communists, which is why locals still call parts of it "the cells."

Inside, three things deserve your time:

The Weapons Museum, housed in the former powder magazine, is a surprisingly good survey of Albanian military history from ancient Illyria to the partisan war of 1944. It is compact — give it forty-five minutes.
The captured US Air Force T-33 jet sitting in the courtyard. The story everyone tells is that it was a spy plane shot down in 1957. What it actually was: a Lockheed Shooting Star that strayed into Albanian airspace from Italy during a training flight and force-landed — its pilot, a US major, walked away and was returned within weeks. The regime inflated it into a propaganda trophy, and the Albanian guides' deadpan retelling of the "spy" version is itself a small masterclass in how this country processed the twentieth century.
The clock tower at the ramparts, with a 360-degree view: the silver roofscape tumbling downhill, the Drino Valley, the Greek frontier mountains, and — on clear days — the ghost of the road south to Saranda. This is the shot. Come back at golden hour if you can; the ticket covers a single entry, so plan around it.

If you are lucky enough to visit during the National Folklore Festival — held roughly every five years inside the fortress (the most recent edition was 2023, the next due around 2027–28) — you will see why this region's iso-polyphonic singing, with its drone-and-lead structure, is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list. Even without the festival, you will hear polyphony leaking out of weddings and restaurants on weekends. When it happens near you, stop walking.

The Cold War Tunnel

The strangest site in town hides under the castle hill itself. In the early 1970s, as Hoxha's paranoia peaked — he built hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers across Albania against an invasion that never came — engineers bored a secret tunnel into the rock beneath the fortress to shelter the local party leadership in case of nuclear attack. It stayed classified for decades and only opened to visitors in recent years.

Tours run about twenty minutes and cost around 200 lek, with tickets sold at a small office on Rruga Gjin Zekati near the bazaar — the entrance itself is unmarked. A guide leads you through the blast doors into fluorescent-lit corridors lined with bunkrooms, a control room, and decontamination showers, everything preserved in mint 1970s drab. It is not grand. That is exactly the point: this was a bureaucracy's plan for surviving the end of the world, and it feels like one. If the bunker-as-aesthetic of Albania fascinates you (and after a few days in this country, it will), this is the most intimate example you can actually enter.

The Tower Houses

Gjirokastër's signature buildings are its kullë — fortified Ottoman tower houses, their upper floors of whitewashed stone cantilevered over the street and crowned with grey slate roofs that look like reptile skin from above. They were built by wealthy landowning families between the 17th and 19th centuries as combined homes and fortresses: lower floors for animals and storage, middle floors for winter, an airy reception floor for summer, and firing slits instead of street windows. Dozens survive, many still private homes, and two of the finest are open to visitors.

Zekate House (~300 lek, on Rruga Emin Dervishi in the upper town) was built in 1811–12 for Beqir Zeko, a merchant who served as treasurer to Ali Pasha — the house was both a residence and a demonstration of where the money was. It is the most photogenic interior in Albania: twin mirrored reception rooms with carved wooden ceilings, built-in sofas along the walls (the style is called sofra), and an upper gallery with 360-degree views over the whole city. A small café now operates in the garden courtyard, which means you can sit with a coffee inside a 200-year-old tax collector's house while tour groups trudge past below. Do that.

Skënduli House (~300 lek, off Rruga Sokol Beci, near the bazaar) dates to 1823 and is still owned by the Skënduli family — you will likely be shown around by a descendant. That is the charm: this is not a museum set-dressing but a house with an unbroken family memory, and the tour moves through the summer and winter rooms, the carved musafer (guest) room, the hidden women's quarters, and the courtyard with its stone cistern, while your guide explains which room a bride would have first entered and where the men drank raki in winter. Ask about the difference between the display rooms and the lived-in ones.

Two practical notes for photographers: interiors are dim, so visit before mid-afternoon when light rakes through the galleries; and the exterior shot that matters — Zekate's twin gables stacked against the mountain — is best taken from the lane below the house, at the bend where the slate roof and the crag align. Come at dawn and you will have the street to yourself.

The Two Houses of Memory

Two museums a short walk apart tell you almost everything about 20th-century Albania.

The Ethnographic Museum (Rruga Hysen Hoxha) stands on the site of Enver Hoxha's birthplace. The original house burned down in 1916; the building you enter is a 1966 reconstruction that first served as an Anti-Fascist Museum and, after the regime fell in 1991, was converted into a museum of traditional Gjirokastër life. The irony is dense enough to touch — the dictator's house now displays the very bourgeois domestic culture his regime spent decades suppressing. Inside: room sets faithful to a wealthy Ottoman household, wedding costumes, copperware, and excellent multilingual exhibits including recordings of iso-polyphonic singing and recitations of local wedding rites. The terrace on the top floor has one of the best views in town. Admission has risen recently — around 500 lek (~€5) per recent visitor reports, though older listings still say 200 — and hours run roughly 9:00–19:00 in season. Do not attempt to drive up here; the lanes are staircases with ambitions.

Then walk to the Palorto neighborhood for the Kadare House (Rruga Ismail Kadare), the family home where Albania's greatest writer was born in 1936. The stone tower house was built in 1799, opened as a museum in January 2018, and costs 200 lek (roughly 9:00–19:00, April–October). It is small — a few rooms of family photographs, manuscripts, and first editions, including the English translations that carried Kadare's voice out of the country. Kadare spent his life writing allegorical novels (Chronicle in Stone, The Palace of Dreams, The Siege) that let Albanians read their own terror as literature; he defected to Paris in 1990 and died there in 2024. Standing in his childhood bedroom, with the same slate roofscape he wrote into Chronicle in Stone outside the window, the museum punches far above its ticket price. If you read one book before coming to Gjirokastër, make it that one — the city you walk through afterward is literally his.

The Bazaar and the Old Town

The Old Bazaar (Pazari i Vjetër) along Rruga Gjin Zekati is a single street of low Ottoman-era shops, rebuilt in the 19th century after a fire destroyed the commercial quarter. Historically this was a coppersmiths' market — Gjirokastër metalwork was famous across the empire — and a few smiths still hammer away, worth watching even if you do not buy. The remaining stalls lean heavily on souvenirs (felt slippers, wool blankets, "antique" brass), so calibrate expectations; the pleasure here is architectural, in the stone arcades and the glimpses of roofscape between the shops.

At the bazaar's heart stands the Bazaar Mosque, an 18th-century house of prayer and the only mosque in Gjirokastër permitted to function during the communist decades — Hoxha banned religion outright in 1967, but kept this one open as propaganda for foreign visitors, proof of Albanian "tolerance." It survives as a working mosque and a quiet monument to doublethink.

Two stops underneath and beside it:

Te Kubé, a café-bookshop tucked beneath the mosque, is the town's literary living room — Kadare novels in English on the shelves, espresso at Albanian prices, and in fair weather tables on the cobbles under the minaret. The best single spot in town for an hour of doing nothing.
Argjiro Patisserie (Rruga Gjin Zekati) for oshaf — a Gjirokastër dessert of dried figs simmered in cream — roughly 200–300 lek a bowl. Order it even if you think you are full.

Eating in the Stone City

The single dish you must try is qifqi — herbed rice balls fried in a special pan with round indentations, found only here. Every family claims their grandmother makes the best; several restaurants make it well. Locals also eat shapkat (a rich cornmeal-and-greens casserole, often with feta), tave kosi (baked lamb and rice under a yogurt-egg crust, the national dish), pasha qofte (meatballs in an egg-lemon broth), and lakrori, the region's layered pie. Gjirokastër wine, from the nearby Shesh i Zi vines, is rough, red, local, and exactly right with this food. A full meal with house wine runs €7–12 per person; Albania still prices its restaurants like the 1990s.

Specific addresses:

Taverna Tradicionale Kardhashi (Manalat Quarter, just below the bazaar) — the town's most-loved traditional kitchen, qifqi around 400 lek and a generous lakrori near 1,200 lek; mains hover €7–8. Open roughly 10:00–22:00. Arrive before the Saranda buses return or wait for a table.
Vojsava Restaurant, on the road climbing to the castle — beloved locally for moussaka, qifqi, and tave kosi, with the Drino Valley behind you. Ideal lunch after a morning in the fortress.
Restorant Tradicional Urat, near the bazaar — reliable traditional cooking, good qifqi, quieter than Kardhashi.
Odaja (roughly 10:00–23:00) — one of the more vegetarian-friendly kitchens in town, generous salads and shapkat variants.
Gallery Irish Pub — yes, really; a expat-run bar near the bazaar and the best evening drink in a town that otherwise folds up early. Raki, local wine, and actual cocktails.

The ritual to know: dinner starts late and slow. Order a salad, then raki, then the qifqi to share, and let the evening find its own pace. Nobody in Gjirokastër has ever hurried a meal, and after one night here, you will understand why.

Day Trips

The Blue Eye (Syri i Kaltër) is the famous one: an artesian spring where water surges up from a depth of more than fifty meters through limestone so clear the vent looks painted. The reality check: swimming has been forbidden for years (the water is a constant 10–13 °C and the spring is a protected water source), and in August the forest path is a conga line. But go early on a shoulder-season morning and it justifies the hype — the cobalt vent, the fish hanging motionless in the blue, the cold radiating off the water like a door left open. It is 30–40 minutes by car from Gjirokastër toward Saranda. Entry is ~50–100 lek (some seasonal reports say up to 250 in high summer) plus 200–300 lek parking; from the gate it is a 1.9 km shaded walk or a tourist road-train (~300 lek). Buses from Gjirokastër pass the turnoff for around 200 lek (30–45 minutes). Combine it with a Saranda day rather than making it a standalone mission.

Benja Thermal Baths and Përmet make the better full day. Drive south through the Këlcyrë Gorge — the Vjosa river canyon, dramatic and worth the trip alone — to the little town of Përmet, then 14 km on toward the village of Benja, where the Kadiut Bridge, a humpbacked Ottoman span from 1760, arches over the Langarica river and the thermal pools sit just upstream. Entry to the pools is free; parking around 200 lek. Manage expectations on the water: at 22–30 °C it reads more "warm river" than "hot spring," the upstream pools run warmer, and the rock underfoot is gloriously slippery — bring grippy sandals and no dignity. There are no facilities, which is rather the point. From Përmet, minibuses run toward Benja in the mornings (~200 lek) if you are going carless; from Gjirokastër, count on 1h15 each way by car.

Closer to home, walk the Ali Pasha Bridge in the Dunavat neighborhood, twenty-five minutes downhill from the bazaar through an ordinary residential lane of slate and laundry lines. The "bridge" is actually a stone aqueduct, built in Ali Pasha's era to carry water to the castle, and its high arch over the stream looks like something a set designer would be fired for inventing. It is free, rarely visited, and pairs well with a coffee at the Ali Pasha's Mill restaurant beside it.

What to Skip

The midday castle hour. From about 11:00 to 15:00 in season, the fortress and bazaar are a single guided group. See the castle at 9:00 opening or after 17:00, or you will come away thinking Gjirokastër is a theme park.
Eating on the main square with a photo menu. The restaurants with touts and laminated pictures are the weakest kitchens in town; walk two streets into the Manalat Quarter or up the castle road and eat what the locals eat for half the price.
The Blue Eye as a standalone day trip from Saranda in August. Lines, road trains, no swimming, one photo. Fold it into a Gjirokastër–Saranda road day in shoulder season instead.
Driving your rental car into the old town. The lanes above the bazaar narrow to staircase-width; park at the lot by the clock tower approach or your guesthouse and walk. Your insurance will not find it charming.
Skipping the tower houses to save 600 lek. Zekate and Skënduli are the destination. If the budget is tight, do one, but do not do neither.
Expecting a "spy plane." The T-33 is a static shell with a good story. Give it five minutes and spend the saved time on the ramparts.
Winter weekends. Many restaurants and some museums close November–March; the stone city in fog is atmospheric, but check openings before a cold-season trip.

Practical Notes

Getting there. From Tirana, buses run roughly 05:00–20:30 from the North & South Bus Terminal (outside the center — take a taxi or the "Instituti" city bus), taking 3.5–4 hours and costing 1,200 lek (~€12); pay the driver in cash. From Saranda, direct buses (about four a day, ~500 lek / €6, 1–1.5 hours) climb the gorge road — the departure point is near the corner of Rruga Onhezmi and Rruga Flamurit; verify times locally as they shift seasonally. A taxi from Saranda runs ~6,000 lek. There are no trains to Gjirokastër — there are barely trains to anywhere in Albania — and the nearest airport is Tirana, a four-hour drive. Renting a car (from ~€25/day in shoulder season, more in summer) transforms the surrounding region: the Blue Eye, Këlcyrë Gorge, and Përmet all want wheels.

Getting around. Gjirokastër calls itself the "city of a thousand steps" without exaggeration. Everything is walkable and nothing is flat; the castle is a steep 15–20 minutes up from the bazaar. Wear shoes with real grip — the slate cobbles are polished to ice by centuries of feet, and downhill is harder than up. Taxis exist for the bus station run (~300–500 lek) but you will not need them in the old town.

Money and language. Albania runs on cash. Cards are accepted at some hotels and pricier restaurants, but small museums (castle, tunnel, tower houses) are lek-only, so keep a fold of small notes — at roughly 100 lek to the euro, even modest days cost little. Albanian is the language, but Greek is widely spoken (Gjirokastër has a large ethnic-Greek community, and the border at Kakavia is half an hour away), and English works in most guesthouses and restaurants.

Where to stay. Sleep inside the historic quarter, ideally in a converted tower house — several Ottoman-era homes now run as guesthouses, with stone courtyards and valley views, from ~€30–40 a night in shoulder season. Waking inside the walls at dawn, before the buses, is the entire argument for sleeping here rather than day-tripping.

When to come. May–June and September–October are ideal: warm, green, and quiet. July–August brings heat and the Saranda crowds; winter is misty and atmospheric but half the town closes. Time the castle for opening or late afternoon, and remember the golden rule of the bazaar: the light that makes the slate roofs turn silver happens in the last hour before sunset, best watched from the castle ramparts with the day's third coffee in hand.

About the Guide

Yuki Tanaka writes about architecture, photography, and the places where buildings outlive the ideologies that built them. Based between Osaka and wherever the light is good, Yuki has spent fifteen years documenting Ottoman and Byzantine heritage across the Balkans and Anatolia, and still maintains that a well-photographed roofscape explains a city better than any museum plaque. In Gjirokastër, Yuki's rule of thumb: follow the slate uphill in the morning, downhill after dark, and never trust a restaurant with a view of the main square.