Albania Is What 'Undiscovered' Actually Looks Like, For Now

For most of the second half of the twentieth century, Albania was among the most closed countries in Europe, sealed off under Enver Hoxha’s isolationist communist regime until its collapse in the early 1990s. One of that era’s stranger legacies is still scattered across the landscape: hundreds of thousands of small concrete bunkers, built on Hoxha’s orders against an invasion that never came, now sitting half-buried in fields, on beaches and along mountain roads as an odd, unmissable souvenir of the years Albania spent talking to almost no one.

Tirana carries that history more visibly than most capitals carry their communist past, if only because it has chosen to paint over rather than demolish it. As mayor in the early 2000s, before he became Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama had blocks of grey Soviet-era apartment buildings repainted in bright colour blocks and geometric patterns, a low-cost intervention that changed how the city photographed and, by most accounts, how it felt to live in long before any larger redevelopment followed.

A coastline still being discovered

South of Tirana, the Albanian Riviera runs along the Ionian coast through towns like Himarë, Dhërmi and Ksamil, a stretch of clear water and pebble beaches that has drawn comparisons to Croatia’s coast and Greece’s Ionian islands for years, generally at lower prices and with far less built-up development along the shore. That gap has been narrowing steadily as international arrivals to Albania have climbed through the past decade, and as flight and ferry connections into the region have expanded, but it remains, for now, a coastline where a fair amount of the infrastructure is still catching up with the interest.

Why the trend line matters

What makes Albania a genuine trend story rather than a one-season fashion is the direction of travel: costs, infrastructure and international attention have all been moving the same way for several years running, which is usually the point at which a place stops being a tip shared quietly and starts appearing on everyone’s list at once. Whether that happens over the next two seasons or the next ten, the gap between what the Albanian Riviera currently costs and what a comparable stretch of Croatian or Greek coastline costs is unlikely to stay this wide for long.

Traveller tips

• Tirana International Airport has grown its European network considerably in recent years; most routes from India still connect through Istanbul, Vienna or another European hub.
• July and August are the Riviera’s busiest and most expensive months; late spring and early autumn offer a calmer, cooler alternative with similar sea temperatures.
• Coastal roads through the Riviera are narrow and mountainous in places; hire cars accordingly and build in extra time.
• Cash is still preferred over cards in smaller coastal towns; carry euros or Albanian lek for day-to-day spending.