Overview to Tirana: Travel Guide and Tourist Information
- Tirana Information
- Eating & drinking in Tirana
- Things to do in Tirana
- Where to stay in Tirana
- Tirana street map
Like many Central and Eastern European states touched by communism, there’s something wonderfully weird about Albania. Having fallen out with the USSR and then China, it remained cocooned and isolated from the rest of the world for many years.
Now, though, it’s completely opened itself up to travelers and its capital, Tirana, is one of the more fascinating destinations in Europe. But the years of isolation were not kind to the city, and many parts of it are still harrowingly rundown and dilapidated.
Two quarters of town worth investigating are Pazari and Mujos, where some of the city’s few remaining old buildings can be found. Elsewhere, previously drab, Soviet-style buildings have had a lick of color added to them, with an engagingly peculiar effect.
The impressive Skenderberg Square sits at the heart of the city with Bulevardi Deshmoret I Kombit running off it. In contrast to this sullen street, there also some pleasant parks and open spaces, of which the Martyrs’ Cemetery and the Great Park of Tirana are the stand-out attractions.
The Et’hem Bey Mosque and its Clock Tower (the Sahat-Kulla) are the city’s most noteworthy sights. But Tirana is not really that sort of place; it’s more of a destination for the inquisitive traveler looking for something startlingly new and different.
After dark, the city has a decidedly sedate pace. The cafés and bars of the New Town of Ish-Blloku are packed with earnest locals locked in discussion. Eating out in the city – and there are plenty of restaurants on and around the Ish-Blloku, too – is reassuringly cheap.
Traveling in Albania is the real deal, and Tirana - rough around the edges and genuinely baffling at times - is obviously no different. Outside the city, the rest of the country stretches away, and with it the sense of frontier traveling through a virgin land.
