Once and future glories Albania is rich in ancient ruins that could pave the way to prosperity for the country's burgeoning tourist industry, says Jeremy Seal Sunday Telegraph, 16/3/2008
On a promontory high above the Vjose River valley, among olive trees and turban-topped dervish graves, we came to the ruins of Byllis. We explored the city’s stout Roman walls, its agora, theatre and bathhouse, and pottered about the column-strewn foundations of late-antique basilicas. Glimpses of mosaic – a figure milking a goat, or feeding a hunting dog - hinted at the magnificent pavements beneath the protective covering of sand. It might have frustrated us that a lack of funds, this being Albania, meant such mosaics could not be displayed. Even so, lunching at a nearby restaurant on pork chops sprinkled with oregano and washed down with a robust local wine, the overall feeling was one of exhilaration that we had the place – restaurant, view, archaeological site and even, it sometimes seemed, oddball country – all to ourselves.
Albania’s abundant archaeology has been recognised since the likes of Lord Byron and Edward Lear discovered this atmospheric Balkan backwater in the nineteenth century. Even in the 1980s, with the country deep in Communist isolation, westerners holidaying on adjacent Greek Corfu returned bright-eyed and tantalised after day visits to the evocative coastal site at Butrint. Now, ten years after pyramid investment schemes bankrupted the population and put any post-Communist recovery firmly on hold, it is Albania’s sites, citadels and monuments – Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Venetian – which are nourishing tourism’s very first shoots here. Improvements to the appalling roads are yet to reduce travelling times, with the 225 kilometres between Tirana and Saranda taking an all-too-typical seven hours, but it is now possible to explore Albania in something approaching a comprehensive, coherent and comfortable fashion.
Much of the credit must fall to archaeology tour specialists Andante – one of only two UK operators currently featuring the country - and their guide lecturer, Butrint-based archaeologist Oliver Gilkes. Gilkes, steeped in Albanian culture and history, took us to barely visited sites like the hillside fortifications in the pristine Selo Valley, and the lovely domed monastery church at Mesopotam. He marched us across a rain-swept plain to the remarkably preserved theatre at Hadrianopolis. He also proved a knack for turning up memorable cameos from Albanian life, leading us to the restaurant in the Greek-speaking village of Terihat just as a gathering of 30 family and friends, arranged in exact order of seniority, joined in a haunting polyphonic chant to celebrate the 80th birthday of the village man at the table head.
In the government-designated ‘museum city’ of Berat handsome stuccoed merchants’ houses perched above the river, and white beards read their korans in the late-Ottoman mosques. Bats stirred the dank air in the crag-top citadel’s cavernous cistern, and a display collection of exquisite icons by medieval master painters including Onufri, known for the shade of red particular to his work, adorned the nearby St Mary church. From the window of my room at the faded Tomori, I admired the town’s square’s vehicle assortment – bicycles and a horse-drawn cart, dodgem cars and a period-piece steam roller rusting down in a parking space flanked by shiny Mercedes – before retiring to read by the bare light of a ceiling bulb. My wake-up call took the form of a sharp rap on the door, and for a moment I might have been transported back to this hotel’s Communist heyday.
And so to Byllis, a site barely known beyond Albania, though the approach road through the Mallakaster Hills proved more a reminder of Albanian dereliction. There were rusting oil derricks, blighted housing blocks, abandoned factory buildings and state farms. Written-off cars were stacked at the road-side and unfinished concrete constructions, each with roof-top effigy or mildewed cuddly toy to ward off evil spirits, rose alongside the country’s 700,000 Commuist-era concrete bunkers. To the first rule of archaeology – that structural condition is what distinguishes ancient sites from modern buildings – Albania may just prove the exception.
But not always. Where the road led into the mountains and over the Muzine Pass, we were suddenly among meadows and forests of walnut trees where stone churches perched on picturesque crags. A beautiful spring known as Syri I Kalter (the Blue Eye) rose from a subterranean tunnel to pool among a glade of plane trees (before, it should be said, flowing on to feed a hydro-electric station formerly named after Josef Stalin). At the isthmus site of Butrint, where we wandered from the enchanting classical theatre and the columned 6th-century baptistery to the 17th-century forts of the Venetians, it was as if every age had left its mark. We circumvented the momentous walls and climbed through a gateway to picnic on fruit and savoury byreke pastries in the grounds of the superbly displayed museum.
The armaments museum at Gjirokastra, where they had not got round to dismantling the Communist propaganda, had an appeal all of its own. Grim cell blocks remembered the torment meted out by King’s Zog’s Imperialists, while a statue showed Mother Albania extending an authoritative finger to banish cringing representations of fascism and religion from the country. An American jet, forced down by the Communists in 1957, mouldered down on an outer terrace.
Elsewhere, however, visible efforts were being made to save the town, a world heritage site since 2005. Gjirokastra possesses a unique stock of late-Ottoman mansions which are now crumbling beneath the weight of poverty, neglect – and their massive stone roofs. Elenita, a young woman from the town’s conservation office, led us round the recently restored Zekate House where the painted family rooms and walnut wood screens, ornate ceilings and high balconies evoked the one-time decorousness of provincial life in this far-flung corner of empire.
The likes of Elenita, who proved a sight more communicative and capable than many of her Communist-moulded elders, suggested the human potential was there to save Gjirokastra, and hinted at a brighter Alabanian future. Tourists would help too. And when a queue of buses disembarked hundreds of cruise-ship passengers near the great concrete plinth which had once been home to the statue of Enver Hoxha, Gjirokastra-born Communist tyrant, it was clear that a great many people - Elenita and Oliver Gilkes among them - were very happy indeed to see them.
FACTBOX:
The author was a guest of Andante Travels (01722 713800; www.andantetravels.co.uk) whose nine-day Albania tours run in May and October at an all-inclusive cost of £1850 per person. The excellent Andante still feature Albania, and the enthusiastic and knowledgeable Oliver Gilkes continues to lead most of the company's tours to the country.
Reading: Albania (Bradt, £13.95)
Albania’s abundant archaeology has been recognised since the likes of Lord Byron and Edward Lear discovered this atmospheric Balkan backwater in the nineteenth century. Even in the 1980s, with the country deep in Communist isolation, westerners holidaying on adjacent Greek Corfu returned bright-eyed and tantalised after day visits to the evocative coastal site at Butrint. Now, ten years after pyramid investment schemes bankrupted the population and put any post-Communist recovery firmly on hold, it is Albania’s sites, citadels and monuments – Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Venetian – which are nourishing tourism’s very first shoots here. Improvements to the appalling roads are yet to reduce travelling times, with the 225 kilometres between Tirana and Saranda taking an all-too-typical seven hours, but it is now possible to explore Albania in something approaching a comprehensive, coherent and comfortable fashion.
Much of the credit must fall to archaeology tour specialists Andante – one of only two UK operators currently featuring the country - and their guide lecturer, Butrint-based archaeologist Oliver Gilkes. Gilkes, steeped in Albanian culture and history, took us to barely visited sites like the hillside fortifications in the pristine Selo Valley, and the lovely domed monastery church at Mesopotam. He marched us across a rain-swept plain to the remarkably preserved theatre at Hadrianopolis. He also proved a knack for turning up memorable cameos from Albanian life, leading us to the restaurant in the Greek-speaking village of Terihat just as a gathering of 30 family and friends, arranged in exact order of seniority, joined in a haunting polyphonic chant to celebrate the 80th birthday of the village man at the table head.
In the government-designated ‘museum city’ of Berat handsome stuccoed merchants’ houses perched above the river, and white beards read their korans in the late-Ottoman mosques. Bats stirred the dank air in the crag-top citadel’s cavernous cistern, and a display collection of exquisite icons by medieval master painters including Onufri, known for the shade of red particular to his work, adorned the nearby St Mary church. From the window of my room at the faded Tomori, I admired the town’s square’s vehicle assortment – bicycles and a horse-drawn cart, dodgem cars and a period-piece steam roller rusting down in a parking space flanked by shiny Mercedes – before retiring to read by the bare light of a ceiling bulb. My wake-up call took the form of a sharp rap on the door, and for a moment I might have been transported back to this hotel’s Communist heyday.
And so to Byllis, a site barely known beyond Albania, though the approach road through the Mallakaster Hills proved more a reminder of Albanian dereliction. There were rusting oil derricks, blighted housing blocks, abandoned factory buildings and state farms. Written-off cars were stacked at the road-side and unfinished concrete constructions, each with roof-top effigy or mildewed cuddly toy to ward off evil spirits, rose alongside the country’s 700,000 Commuist-era concrete bunkers. To the first rule of archaeology – that structural condition is what distinguishes ancient sites from modern buildings – Albania may just prove the exception.
But not always. Where the road led into the mountains and over the Muzine Pass, we were suddenly among meadows and forests of walnut trees where stone churches perched on picturesque crags. A beautiful spring known as Syri I Kalter (the Blue Eye) rose from a subterranean tunnel to pool among a glade of plane trees (before, it should be said, flowing on to feed a hydro-electric station formerly named after Josef Stalin). At the isthmus site of Butrint, where we wandered from the enchanting classical theatre and the columned 6th-century baptistery to the 17th-century forts of the Venetians, it was as if every age had left its mark. We circumvented the momentous walls and climbed through a gateway to picnic on fruit and savoury byreke pastries in the grounds of the superbly displayed museum.
The armaments museum at Gjirokastra, where they had not got round to dismantling the Communist propaganda, had an appeal all of its own. Grim cell blocks remembered the torment meted out by King’s Zog’s Imperialists, while a statue showed Mother Albania extending an authoritative finger to banish cringing representations of fascism and religion from the country. An American jet, forced down by the Communists in 1957, mouldered down on an outer terrace.
Elsewhere, however, visible efforts were being made to save the town, a world heritage site since 2005. Gjirokastra possesses a unique stock of late-Ottoman mansions which are now crumbling beneath the weight of poverty, neglect – and their massive stone roofs. Elenita, a young woman from the town’s conservation office, led us round the recently restored Zekate House where the painted family rooms and walnut wood screens, ornate ceilings and high balconies evoked the one-time decorousness of provincial life in this far-flung corner of empire.
The likes of Elenita, who proved a sight more communicative and capable than many of her Communist-moulded elders, suggested the human potential was there to save Gjirokastra, and hinted at a brighter Alabanian future. Tourists would help too. And when a queue of buses disembarked hundreds of cruise-ship passengers near the great concrete plinth which had once been home to the statue of Enver Hoxha, Gjirokastra-born Communist tyrant, it was clear that a great many people - Elenita and Oliver Gilkes among them - were very happy indeed to see them.
FACTBOX:
The author was a guest of Andante Travels (01722 713800; www.andantetravels.co.uk) whose nine-day Albania tours run in May and October at an all-inclusive cost of £1850 per person. The excellent Andante still feature Albania, and the enthusiastic and knowledgeable Oliver Gilkes continues to lead most of the company's tours to the country.
Reading: Albania (Bradt, £13.95)
