Host Country 2025: Tracing Albania’s rich history and deep cultural transformation

International

As tourists continue to flock to Albania throughout the year, they are drawn not only to the country's natural beauty, but also to its rich history and profound cultural transformation.

Albania, the Official Host Country of ITB Berlin 2025, has long been regarded as a gate between the East and the West, with both cultures coexisting in perfect harmony. In this blog, we want to take you through some of the most interesting cultural sites in the country, which saw 36 per cent more visitors for the period between January and August, compared to the previous year.

House of Leaves

Located in the centre of Tirana, the building known as The House of Leaves is a museum of the Secret Surveillance of Albania. It offers insights to communist Albania, considered one of the darkest periods in the country’s history. Visiting tourists are left with so many questions, wondering how life for locals must have been, under the strict and watchful eye of the infamous Sigurimi.

The Gjirokastra Fortress

Perched high on top of a hillside overlooking the town below on one side and a glorious view of the mountains to the other, the Gjirokastra Fortress is the most visited cultural site in 2024. Once home of Princess Argjiro, who according to folkloric traditions, jumped off the castle with her child to avoid being captured by the Ottomans, it inspired Albania’s prolific author Ismail Kadare to dedicate a poem.

National Iconographic Museum “Onufri”

The premises of this museum belong to a cathedral built in 1797, erected over the highest peak of the Berat castle. The iconostasis inside the cathedral/museum, completed in 1807, is considered one of the finest achievements of Albanian wood-work. The museum has a collection of two hundred objects, mainly ecclesial, gathered primarily from the Berat region. They mainly consist of icons and sets of old liturgical specimens.

National Museum of Medieval Arts

This museum is located in Korçë and exhibits more than 7,000 artworks and artistic objects mainly in the form of icons, woodworks and engravings, stone and metal works, crafts on textile, and so on. It is a depository of marvellous artworks that miraculously survived the communist regime. The tour in the museum reaches a culminating point in the Black Labyrinth Pavilion and the Red Room.

Marubi National Museum of Photography

This is Albania’s first photography-dedicated museum. Located in Shkodër, the museum is integrated in the studio of Pjetër Marubi, an Italian exile who became Albania’s first photographer. His son and grandsons continued the legacy, turning the Marubi family into a dynasty of immense artistic values. Marubi’s collection contains some 400,000 photographs, carefully preserved, showing stills from the 1850s inward.

Centre for Openness and Dialogue (COD)

It offers a unique blend of three venues. A digital room that provides public access to the digitalised archive of the Prime Minister’s office, an internationally registered library that enables COD visitors to interact with thousands of libraries worldwide specialised in politics, current affairs, art, architecture and urban planning, and an exhibition hall.

Each of these three areas operates under an integrated calendar, which features thematic exhibitions of individual artists, increasingly recognised and based on open proposals, with an emphasis on public interest.

Other notable sites include: the Archaeological Museum of Apollonia, Archaeological Museum of Butrint, Museum of Castle Rozafa, National Museum of Independence in Vlorë, National Museum Gjergj Kastrioti in Krujë, Gjon Mili Photography Museum in Korçë, Musine Kokalari Museum in Gjirokastër etc.

Keep an eye out for Illyrian settlements as well, a highly important testament to the extraordinary cultural heritage of Albanians, as one of the oldest populations in the Balkans and Europe.

Make sure to also visit Albania’s archaeological parks such as Amantia in Vlorë, Antigonea in Gjirokastër, Apollonia in Fier, Lissus in Lezhë, Oricum in Vlorë, as well as archaeological remnants scattered throughout the entire country.

Find out more about the Official Host Country of ITB Berlin 2025 at https://albania.al.