Albania

A country archive from the Illyrians to the present, Skanderbeg's twenty-five-year defiance, four Ottoman centuries, the declaration at Vlorë in 1912, the most isolated state in Europe and its bunkers, the crossing of the 1990s, and the mountains, coast and old law that outlasted all of it.

A chronological documentary of 906 moments spanning 3700 BC–2026 on Loreline.

Curated by Olivier · last updated 2026-08-22

Eras

Before Albania, The Illyrians held this coast and its mountains long before there was a country called Albania, trading and fighting with Greek colonies planted at Epidamnos, later Durrës, and at Apollonia, and with the Roman republic that eventually absorbed them. Queen Teuta's wars with Rome, the Via Egnatia driven across the Balkans, and the layered ruins of Butrint, inhabited from prehistory through Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Venetian hands, are what survives of the millennia before the Albanian state.
Skanderbeg, Gjergj Kastrioti, taken as a hostage to the Ottoman court and returned as its enemy, seized Krujë in 1443 and held off two empires for twenty-five years. The League of Lezhë bound the Albanian lords together in 1444; after his death in 1468 the resistance collapsed within a decade. His birth year is usually given as about 1405 and is genuinely unknowable, no birth records survive for him or his siblings. This facet is both the man and his long afterlife as the national symbol, which is a separate story with its own dates.
Diaspora, More Albanians live outside the country than in it. The Arbëreshë have been in southern Italy since the fifteenth century, when Skanderbeg's defeat sent them across the Adriatic, and still speak a form of Albanian. Later waves left under the Ottomans, under Zog, and in the 1990s. The best-known Albanian of the twentieth century, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, born in Skopje, known as Mother Teresa, never lived in Albania at all.
Ottoman Rule, Albanian lords became Ottoman vassals after the Battle of Savra in 1385, and after Skanderbeg the land was ruled from Istanbul for four centuries. It was a period of conversion, of Albanians rising high in the imperial service, and of near-autonomous local rulers, Ali Pasha of Ioannina above all. It also built the towns: Berat and Gjirokastër, both later inscribed by UNESCO, are Ottoman-era architecture still standing and still lived in.
Becoming a Country, The Rilindja, the national awakening, ran from the League of Prizren in 1878 through the Congress of Manastir in 1908, which settled the Albanian alphabet, to the declaration of independence at Vlorë on 28 November 1912. The flag was raised there on 4 December; the two dates are often conflated. What followed was borders drawn by others at Florence in 1913, a Dutch military mission sent to build a gendarmerie, Prince Wied's six-month principality, the Congress of Lushnjë, and Ahmet Zogu as president and then king.
Written With Light, Pjetër Marubi, a political exile from Italy, made what is usually called the first photograph taken in Albania in 1858, a portrait of Hamza bey Kazazi. His studio in Shkodër, Dritëshkronja, "written with the light", passed to Kel and then Gegë Marubi and ran for over a century, leaving an archive of somewhere between 150,000 and 500,000 negatives depending on what is being counted. Around it: Kolë Idromeno, painter, photographer and the first Albanian to screen films; Kinostudio "Shqipëria e Re", which made the country's cinema from 1952 to 1992; and Gjon Mili of Korçë, who became one of LIFE's great photographers.
Besa and the Old Law, The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini codified northern Albanian life for centuries, hospitality, honour, property, and the blood feud, and at its centre stood besa, a word of honour treated as absolute. The same code produced the burrnesha, women who swore to live as men. This facet also holds what UNESCO calls Albanian folk iso-polyphony, proclaimed a Masterpiece in 2005 and inscribed on the Representative List in 2008: two solo voices over a choral drone, whose name comes from the ison of Byzantine chant, and whose Lab and Tosk forms differ in how that drone is sung.
Mountains and Coast, The Accursed Mountains in the north, the Riviera in the south, and the Vjosa running between them, in 2023 declared Europe's first wild-river national park, undammed along its whole length. Theth and Valbona, long separate parks, were merged in 2022. This facet is the land itself: the coast, the lakes, the high valleys that kept the north beyond the reach of every empire that claimed it.
War, For thirty years the new country was mostly fought over rather than governed. The Balkan Wars and the long siege of Shkodër ran straight into the First World War, when Austro-Hungarian, Italian, French and Serbian armies all held parts of Albania and the Austro-Hungarian war press office photographed its occupation in remarkable detail. Italy invaded on 7 April 1939, Greece and Italy fought across the southern mountains in 1940–41, German forces took over in 1943, and the partisan war ended with the liberation of Tirana on 17 November 1944. Much of the surviving photography of Albania from these decades was made by the armies occupying it.
Hoxha, For forty-five years Enver Hoxha governed Albania as the most isolated state in Europe, breaking with Yugoslavia in 1948, the Soviet Union in 1961 and finally China in 1978, until the country stood alone on principle. In 1967 religion was abolished outright and Albania declared itself the world's first atheist state. From 1967 to 1986 the country was bunkered: the famous figure of 750,000 was Hoxha's target, not a count, and the best-evidenced number is 173,371 completed by 1983. The exact total is unknown.
Emigration, Communism fell between 1990 and 1991, and what followed was not a smooth transition but a decade of leaving and collapse. On 8 August 1991 the freighter Vlora reached Bari carrying some twenty thousand people. In 1997 the pyramid schemes that had swallowed much of the country's savings collapsed, the state lost control of its own armouries, and Albania came close to civil war. In 1999 it took in refugees from Kosovo in numbers that would have strained a far larger country.
Icons and Monuments, Onufri painted in the sixteenth century in a red whose composition is still argued over, and the icon workshops of Berat and Voskopojë kept working long after the empire around them changed religion. Four hundred years later the state commissioned a different kind of image entirely: Mother Albania standing over the martyrs' cemetery in Tirana, finished in 1971 and dedicated the year after, and the forty-metre mosaic put across the front of the National History Museum in 1981. This facet is the work itself, panels, frescoes, canvases, bronze, and the painted facades that went up when the grey came off.
What They Wore, The xhubleta is a bell-shaped dress of felted wool that hangs from the shoulders, is made without a waist seam, and was still being woven in the northern highlands when UNESCO placed it on the urgent-safeguarding list in 2022. Against it stand the fustanella of the south, the white felt qeleshe that survived every regime, and bridal silver heavy enough to be counted as a dowry. Much of what survives was photographed by people passing through, travellers, an Austro-Hungarian war press office, Edith Durham in the northern mountains, which is why the clothes are often better recorded than the people wearing them.
Literature, The first book printed in Albanian is the Meshari of Gjon Buzuku, finished on 12 August 1555, and a single copy survives, in the Vatican Library, missing its first sixteen leaves. The language spent the next three and a half centuries being written in whichever alphabet was to hand until the Congress of Manastir adopted a Latin one in November 1908, a choice a second congress had to cement in 1910. Then came a literature: Naim Frashëri and the Rilindja poets, Fishta's highland epic, Migjeni dead at twenty-six, Musine Kokalari sentenced to thirty years for helping found a party and serving sixteen, and Ismail Kadare, who wrote inside the system and against it for fifty years and was read everywhere else.
Faith and Feast, Albania is the world headquarters of the Bektashi, a Sufi order whose leader was installed in Tirana on 20 March 1930, and it is also Sunni, Orthodox and Catholic, in a mixture usually described from outside as remarkable and from inside as ordinary. In 1967 the state abolished all of it, closed or destroyed the buildings and became the only country to write the ban into its constitution. On 18 January 1991 some ten thousand people walked into the Et'hem Bey mosque without permission and nobody stopped them. The feasts outlasted the ban, Summer Day on 14 March, Nevruz, the climb up Mount Tomorr in the last week of August, and so did the coffee.
Music, Two solo voices over a choral drone is the sound Albania is best known for, and it is only part of it. The lahuta, a single-stringed bowed fiddle, carried the epic songs of the northern highlands for centuries, and the two-stringed çifteli carried everything else. Under the state, song was organised: Radio Tirana broadcast it, the Gjirokastër folklore festival gathered it every few years, and Festivali i Këngës ran from 1962 as the country's song contest. Its eleventh edition, in December 1972, was condemned the following year as too Western, Todi Lubonja and Fadil Paçrami were purged in 1973, and Paçrami was arrested in 1975 and sentenced to twenty-five years. What came after all of it is a diaspora pop industry loud enough to be heard from anywhere.
Tirana, A capital that repainted itself. The mayor who ordered the grey blocks covered in colour, the illegal buildings cleared from the river and the stadium, the station demolished and the boulevard driven over it, the pyramid rebuilt as a youth centre, and the tower they call the Rock going up on Skanderbeg Square.
Protests, The street as the place where Albanian politics happens. Miners from Bulqizë outside the ministry, thousands on Skanderbeg Square over prices, the fight for public transport passes, the first Pride marches in Tirana, and the crowds that fill the Boulevard of the Martyrs of the Nation.

2019-11-27 - Aid unloaded at Durrës after the earthquake. Relief material is unloaded at Durrës on 27 November 2019, a day after the strongest earthquake to hit Albania in decades killed fifty-one people and left thousands homeless along the central coast.
2019-12-28 - The National Theatre of Albania, before demolition. Albania's National Theatre, built 1939, photographed in December 2019, months before the government demolished it despite a protected-monument designation.
2020-01-26 - Bulqizë miners protest in Tirana. Chrome miners from Bulqizë demonstrate in Tirana in January 2020 for the right to organise a union. The Bulqizë mine, opened under the communist government, remains one of the country's hardest workplaces.
2020-04-19 - Village school at Sotirë. The school building in the village of Sotirë in southern Albania, part of the Greek-speaking minority area of the Dropull and Vurg valleys. Community schools like this one carry minority-language teaching in the far south.
2020-05-14 - Monument to Queen Teuta at the Kruje museum. A modern figure of Teuta at the museum in Kruje. Albania's national imagination reaches past Skanderbeg to the Illyrian rulers, and Teuta is the one most often given a face.
2020-05-18 - Demolition of the National Theatre of Albania, 18 May 2020. The demolition of Albania's National Theatre, photographed 18 May 2020, one day after riot police cleared protesting artists and the building was bulldozed overnight.
2020-05-22 - Window of the Dollma teqe at Krujë. A carved window of the Dollma teqe below Krujë castle, a Bektashi lodge kept by the same family since the eighteenth century. It survived the 1967 campaign that closed every other place of worship in the country.
2020 - Bektashi pilgrimage on Mount Tomorr. Footage of the Bektashi pilgrimage to the shrine of Abbas Ali on Mount Tomorr, the August gathering that draws hundreds of thousands of believers to the mountain sacred to the order.
2020 - Remains of the National Theatre of Albania. The rubble of the National Theatre of Albania after its May 2020 demolition.
2020 - MIRUD performing at Festivali i Këngës 59. The artist MIRUD performing at the 59th Festivali i Këngës in 2020, the annual Albanian song contest broadcast by RTSH.
2020 - Introducing: The Albanian Çifteli. Introductory demonstration of the çifteli, the two-string long-necked lute central to northern Albanian folk music.
2020 - Queen Teuta Quartet - Arbëresh Medley (Traditional). Arbëresh (Italo-Albanian diaspora, Calabria/Sicily) traditional medley performed by the Queen Teuta Quartet, preserving song heritage descended from 15th-century Albanian settlement in Italy. Labeled Arbëresh, not mainland-Albanian.
2020-08-06 - Inside the Independence Museum, Vlorë. A reconstructed working room inside the Independence Museum in Vlorë. The furnishings recall the improvised offices from which the new Albanian state was administered in 1912 and 1913.
2020-08-06 - National Museum of Independence, Vlorë. The Muzeu Kombëtar i Pavarësisë occupies the villa where Albania's first government sat in 1912. The museum preserves the rooms used by Ismail Qemali and his ministers.
2020-10-02 - The Marubi archive on show in Milan. A short piece from the Marubi National Museum of Photography in Shkodër for 'Marubi archive: the photographic ritual', curated by Zef Paci. The Marubi studio photographed Albanians across three generations from 1856 onward.
2020-10-10 - Inside Hoxha's secret villa and bunker. Top Channel's 'Gjurme Shqiptare' examines the hidden villa and the command bunker prepared for Enver Hoxha in case of war, and asks how many labourers died building them. The complex stayed unknown to the public for decades.
2020-11 - Making Albanian raki by grape distillation. Grapes fermented and run through a still at a farm in Daias, Albania, to make raki, the actual distillation process behind the fruit brandy that anchors Albanian hospitality and the autumn household calendar.
2020-11-15 - Northern folk motifs by Agron Pllumaj. The Gheg musician Agron Pllumaj performs motifs from the northern Albanian folk repertoire in a clip he dedicates to an old church and to family members no longer living.
2021-02-10 - Copper ewer and tray in the ethnographic museum. A copper gjym and tepsi in an Albanian ethnographic museum. Coppersmiths worked whole quarters of the old bazaars at Shkoder, Kruje and Gjirokaster.
2021-02-10 - Women's jelek, Elbasan Ethnographic Museum. A women's jelek from the Elbasan Ethnographic Museum, photographed for Wiki Loves Folklore 2021, showing the embroidered vest style specific to the region's women's ensemble.
2021-02-24 - Labëria regional folk costume. Regional folk costume of Labëria, southern Albania, photographed for Wiki Loves Folklore 2021.
2021-03 - Anxhela Peristeri - Karma - Albania - Official Music Video - Eurovision 2021. Anxhela Peristeri performing 'Karma' for Albania at Eurovision 2021, winner of that year's Festivali i Këngës.
2021-06-11 - Bebe Rexha - Baby, I'm Jealous (feat. Doja Cat) [Official Music Video]. Bebe Rexha featuring Doja Cat, official music video for 'Baby, I'm Jealous'.
2021 - Petition for public transport passes, Tirana. Activists of Levizja Bashke hand in a petition for the return of urban travel passes and better public transport in Tirana in the summer of 2021. Street campaigning of this kind has become a normal part of Albanian civic life.
2021 - Visiting the summit of Mount Tomorr. First-person footage of the climb to the 2,416-metre summit of Mount Tomorr, showing the pilgrimage türbe and the mountain landscape sacred to the Bektashi order.
2021 - Manjola Nallbani - Triumf. A more recent official single from Manjola Nallbani, three-time Festivali i Këngës winner (1989, 1992, 1993) and one of the defining voices connecting communist-era and modern Albanian pop.
2021 - Olimpia Smajlaj performing at Festivali i Këngës 60. Olimpia Smajlaj performing at the 60th Festivali i Këngës in 2021.
2021 - National Geographic reportazh për Voskopojën. National Geographic-produced report on Voskopojë, focusing on the town's 18th-century fresco-covered churches, rebroadcast on Tv Klan.
2021 - Arilena Ara, Albanian singer. Arilena Ara, who represented Albania at the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 with 'Fall from the Sky'.
2021 - Albanian Sharki (Çifteli Qifteli) me 3 tela, instrument Shqiptar. Demonstration of the 3-string Albanian sharki, a çifteli variant, by a dedicated instrument-focused channel.
2021-07-18 - A row over the Mother Teresa memorial. Skopje's mayor wants the memorial to Mother Teresa, born in the city in 1910 to an Albanian family, removed because it blocks a street. The proposal put the municipality at odds with the Vatican.
2021-09-29 - Lea Ypi on the year everything changed. The writer Lea Ypi describes coming of age in Albania as the last Stalinist state in Europe fell apart, the subject of her memoir 'Free'. She speaks from inside a family whose own history the change reopened.
2021-10-17 - Statues of Abdyl Frashëri, Ymer Prizreni and Sulejman Vokshi. The three leading figures of the League of Prizren, cast in bronze in the town where the League met. Abdyl Frashëri went on to argue the Albanian case in the European capitals.
2021-11-06 - Orthodox chapel in Pustec on Lake Prespa. A small Orthodox chapel in Pustec on Lake Prespa in eastern Albania, home to the country's Slavic Orthodox Macedonian minority.
2022-03-12 - Thousands on Skanderbeg Square against price rises. Crowds fill Skanderbeg Square in Tirana on 12 March 2022 to protest against the sharp rise in fuel and food prices. It was the largest street mobilisation in the capital in several years.
2022-05-10 - Ronela Hajati performing 'Sekret', Eurovision 2022. Ronela Hajati performing 'Sekret' on stage at the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 semi-final in Turin.
2022-05-26 - The League of Prizren complex. The restored complex in Prizren where Albanian delegates met in June 1878 to resist the partition of Albanian-inhabited lands. The League is treated as the start of the national awakening.
2022-06-03 - Ermal Meta, 2022. Ermal Meta, the Albanian-Italian singer-songwriter and 2018 Sanremo Music Festival winner, performing in 2022.
2022-06-12 - Gjon's Tears in concert, Fribourg 2022. Gjon's Tears, the Swiss singer of Kosovo-Albanian descent who represented Switzerland at Eurovision 2021, performing live in 2022.
2022-06-12 - Inside the submarine pen and the airbase. A walk through abandoned military installations of the communist decades, among them a rock-cut submarine shelter on the coast and a disused air base with its aircraft left behind. They were built against an invasion that never came.
2022-06-15 - Ardenica Monastery, interior. Frescoed interior of the church at Ardenica Monastery, one of the Orthodox foundations that anchored religious life in southern-central Albania for centuries.
2022 - Shkodra Elektronike - Turtulleshë. Shkodra Elektronike's folktronica reinterpretation of a traditional Shkodran song, distinct from their Eurovision 2025 entry 'Zjerm' which is excluded per the dedupe list.
2022 - Voskopoja, fshati unik i 24 kishave, turistët të mahnitur nga ikonat. Euronews Albania news segment on Voskopojë, the village of 24 churches, showing visitors viewing the fresco and icon cycles inside the churches.
2022 - Kisha Fjetja e Shën Mërisë, Voskopojë. Travel-documentary visit to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary church in Voskopojë, one of the town's fresco-covered 18th-century churches.
2022 - Adnan Aliu - live with gajde (Albanian bagpipe). Live gajde (Albanian bagpipe) performance by Adnan Aliu, illustrating the instrument's continuing use in Albanian folk music, notably in the Elbasan region.
2022-06-19 - Tavë kosi, the Elbasan yoghurt-and-lamb bake. Tavë kosi, Albania's de facto national dish, baked lamb and rice under a yoghurt-and-egg custard, a recipe traced to Elbasan.
2022-10-09 - Korçë kilim, wreath motif detail. Detail of a traditional Korçë kilim showing repeating geometric and wreath motifs, an example of Albania's regional carpet-weaving craft tradition.
2022-11-18 - Scene from 'The Bat' at the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet, Tirana. A live stage scene from Johann Strauss's operetta 'Die Fledermaus' (The Bat) performed at the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet of Albania, Tirana, 2022.
2022-12-03 - Albanian armed forces band at the independence centenary-and-ten. The band of the Albanian armed forces plays in Tirana on 3 December 2022, part of the celebrations for 110 years since the declaration of independence at Vlorë. Bands from eight countries took part.
2023-01-05 - BUNK'ART 2 - art installation inside the bunker museum. Contemporary art installation inside BUNK'ART 2, the former secret-police bunker beneath Tirana's Skanderbeg Square, converted into a museum and exhibition space.
2023-01-22 - Bettany Hughes at Butrint. The historian Bettany Hughes walks the Roman city on the Vivari channel and then travels inland to mountain communities, setting the ruins beside the customs that still govern life in the highlands.
2023-01-26 - Bari, August 1991, remembered. An Italian documentary on the ship Vlora and the arrival of the Albanians at Bari, carrying the account of Eva Meksi, who made the crossing. It sets the exodus against the collapse of the regime that produced it.
2023-02-20 - Fërgesë with peppers and cottage cheese. Fërgesë, a stewed dish of peppers, tomato and cottage cheese found across Albanian home cooking, shown here in a domestic kitchen preparation.
2023-03-16 - Fërgesë e verë, the summer version. Fërgesë e verë, the lighter summer preparation of the classic pepper-and-cheese stew, plated for a home meal.
2023-05-19 - A stanza of Gjergj Fishta's verse, displayed. A public inscription of a stanza by Gjergj Fishta, photographed in 2023.
2023-05-31 - Tirana's Rock under construction. The Skanderbeg Building, known as Tirana's Rock, rising beside the central square in 2023. A decade of high-rise building has changed the skyline of the capital beyond recognition.
2023 - Sinan Vllasaliu - Hite 2023 (Hitet më të mira). Sinan Vllasaliu is among the most prominent tallava-adjacent Kosovo popullore performers active today; this compilation represents his contemporary hits.
2023 - Muzeu Ikonografik Onufri Berat (Fronti Dhespotik). Museum-guide video walkthrough of the despotic throne (Fronti Dhespotik) and icon display inside the Onufri Museum, Berat, showing the icons themselves on screen.
2023 - Muzeu Ikonografik Onufri Berat, Ikonostasi. Close-up footage of the carved and painted iconostasis inside the Onufri Museum, Berat.
2023 - The Pyramid's Remarkable Rebirth - mini-documentary. Official mini-documentary on the architectural renovation of the Pyramid of Tirana, from derelict Hoxha-era museum to a youth and technology centre.
2023 - Former Radio Tirana villa, exterior. The former Radio Tirana broadcast villa building, a modern photograph of the site associated with the state radio's music and propaganda broadcasts under communism.
2023 - Festivali i Këngës 62 logo. Official logo of the 62nd Festivali i Këngës, the long-running RTSH Albanian song contest (since 1962) that doubles as the Eurovision national selection.
2023-06-23 - House of Gjergj Fishta at Fishte. The house of Gjergj Fishta at Fishte near Lezhe. The Franciscan poet wrote Lahuta e Malcis, the verse epic of the northern highlands, and took part in the 1908 alphabet congress at Manastir; the communist state later banned his work outright.
2023-06-24 - The Marubi National Museum of Photography, Shkodër. The Shkodër museum that holds the Marubi collection, some half a million negatives covering a century of Albanian life. It opened in its present form in 2016.
2023-07-19 - The fortress of Krujë. The walls of Krujë with the museum tower rising inside them. The League of Lezhë, formed in 1444, made this fortress the centre of Albanian resistance to the Ottomans.
2023-07-27 - The Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral, Tirana. The Resurrection of Christ Cathedral in Tirana, seat of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania under Archbishop Anastasios, consecrated in 2012 on the site of a demolished predecessor.
2023-07-29 - Albanian Muslim community centre, London. The UK Albanian Muslim Community and Cultural Centre on Carlton Vale in London, photographed in 2023. Britain took in large numbers of Albanians from Kosovo and Albania from the 1990s onward.
2023-08-11 - The Bektashi world headquarters in Tirana. The seat of the Bektashi order, whose leadership moved from Anatolia to Tirana in 1930 after the Turkish republic banned the dervish lodges. Suppressed in 1967, the order re-established itself here after 1990.
2023-09-09 - Gazmend Freitag visits Ismail Kadare at his home in Qerret, 2023. Ismail Kadare photographed at his home in Qerret in September 2023, less than a year before his death.
2023-09-23 - 1944 Congress Monument, Përmet. The 1944 Congress Monument in Përmet's town centre, a socialist-era lapidar (memorial sculpture) commemorating the founding congress of communist Albania's anti-fascist government.
2023-10-15 - Bronze bust of Gjon Buzuku. A modern bronze bust of Gjon Buzuku, author of the 1555 Meshari, by sculptor Ilia Doko.
2023-11-28 - Performance at the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet, Tirana. A 2023 performance at Tirana's National Theatre of Opera and Ballet, the venue that later hosted Ismail Kadare's state funeral in July 2024.

…786 further moments continue the chronology here. Full text archive: /loreline-text/albania.md

2024-01-14 - The economics of self-reliance. An examination of how communist Albania tried to build a closed, self-supplying economy after breaking with Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and finally China, and what that policy cost. It draws on Blendi Fevziu's biography of Enver Hoxha.
2024-03-15 - Ballakume and revani, the desserts of Dita e Verës. Ballakume and revani, the traditional sweets baked for Dita e Verës (Summer Day) on 14 March, a pagan-rooted spring festival centred on Elbasan and marked nationwide with bonfires and sweets.
2024-04-08 - Triangle byrek. Triangular byrek pastries, the phyllo pie Albanians eat most often, filled here in the classic folded shape sold from bakeries nationwide.
2024-05-04 - Inside the Skanderbeg Museum, Krujë. A gallery inside the National Museum Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu, built into the castle of Krujë. The museum tells the story of the 1443 to 1468 resistance from the fortress that withstood three Ottoman sieges.
2024-05-04 - Collections of the Kruje museum. Displays in the historical museum at Kruje, where copies of Skanderbeg's helmet and sword stand in for originals held in Vienna.
2024-05-04 - Inside the Skanderbeg museum, Kruje. The interior of the national museum Gjergj Kastrioti Skenderbeu at Kruje in 2024. The building, designed by Pranvera Hoxha, wraps the story of the 1443-1468 resistance around the castle ruins.
2024-05-04 - Skanderbeg statue at San Basile, Calabria. A statue of Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg in San Basile, one of the Arbëresh villages founded by Albanians who crossed to Italy after the Ottoman conquest. The communities have kept their language for five centuries.
2024 - Alban Skënderaj - Pranvera. A recent official single by Alban Skënderaj, one of contemporary Albania's most consistently popular male pop vocalists since his 2005 Top Fest debut.
2024 - Anri Sala - Marian Goodman Gallery Los Angeles. Gallery walkthrough footage of Anri Sala's video/sound/light installation 'Time No Longer' at Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles, the Albanian artist who represented the country at the Venice Biennale.
2024-07-12 - Over the pass from Valbona to Theth. A complete account of the day-long walk between Valbona Valley and Theth national parks, filmed along the trail. The crossing is the main way through the Albanian Alps and has reshaped both villages.
2024-08-24 - Memorial to the Cham victims at Kllogjer. A monument at Kllogjer to the Cham Albanians killed and driven out of Epirus at the end of the Second World War. Tens of thousands crossed into Albania in 1944 and 1945 and never went back.
2024-09-29 - Skanderbeg monument on the field of Vajkal, Bulqizë. A monument to Skanderbeg on the plain of Vajkal in the Bulqizë highlands, where his forces fought the Ottomans. Rural sites like this carry the memory of the campaigns as strongly as the museums do.
2024-10-20 - St Mary's monastery church at Dhermi. The historic monastery church of St Mary above Dhermi on the Albanian Riviera, with its graveyard, photographed in 2024. The Himara coast kept its Orthodox monasteries through the Ottoman centuries.
2024-12-23 - Shkodra Elektronike - Zjerm | Albania | National Final Performance #Eurovision2025. Shkodra Elektronike's Festivali i Këngës 63 national-final performance of 'Zjerm', which went on to place 8th for Albania at Eurovision 2025.
2025-02-05 - Cham memorial in Elbasan. A monument in Elbasan to the Cham Albanians, the Muslim Albanian population of Greek Epirus who left or were driven out at the end of the Second World War. Many of the families resettled in towns like this one.
2025-02-19 - The Duam bukë memorial in Kavajë. A memorial in Kavajë carrying the words Duam bukë, we want bread. Kavajë was one of the towns where public protest against the old order became open at the start of the 1990s.
2025-02-19 - Partisan memorial in Berat. The partisan memorial in Berat, the town where the National Liberation Front formed its provisional government in October 1944.
2025-02-19 - Lushnje history museum from the air. An aerial view of the history museum at Lushnje in 2025. The Congress of Lushnje met here in January 1920, rejected the partition of Albania planned by the Paris peace conference and moved the capital to Tirana.
2025-03-08 - Krujë castle above the plain. The walls of Krujë on their ridge, with the coastal plain falling away below. The position is why the fortress held out through three Ottoman sieges.
2025-03-19 - Lapidar at Peza e Vogël. A partisan monument at Peza e Vogël, near the village where the National Liberation Movement held its founding conference in September 1942. Thousands of such lapidars were raised across Albania between the 1960s and the 1980s.
2025-04-05 - Tirana's Rock completed. The finished Skanderbeg Building on the edge of the central square in 2025. Its jagged form was designed to echo the mountains, and it now dominates every view of the square.
2025-04-19 - Inside the Marubi museum. A display of prints and plate cameras in the Marubi museum at Shkodër. Pjetër Marubi opened the first photographic studio in Albania here in the 1850s.
2025-04-19 - The Gjon Markagjoni tower, Shkoder. The stone tower attached to the Shkoder historical museum belonged to the Markagjoni family, chiefs of Mirdita. Fortified tower houses like this were the standard architecture of the northern clans.
2025-04-19 - The historical museum of Shkoder. 's archaeological, ethnographic and photographic collections, including Marubi material.
2025-04-19 - Rozafa fortress above Shkoder. Rozafa stands on the ridge where the Buna and Drin meet, an Illyrian stronghold rebuilt by Venice and the Ottomans. The legend of the woman walled into its foundations is one of the best known Albanian stories.
2025-05-18 - Skanderbeg in Piana degli Albanesi. Gezim Muriqi's statue of Skanderbeg stands in Piana degli Albanesi in Sicily, an Arberesh town that has kept the Albanian language and the Byzantine rite since the fifteenth century.
2025-05-23 - Martyrs' cemetery at Kuc. The Martyrs' Cemetery below the village of Kuc. Every district in Albania was given a cemetery like this for its partisan dead, laid out with the same star and the same rows of identical stones.
2025 - What Is Ismail Kadare's Impact On Albanian Literature? - Talking Southeast Europe. A 2025 discussion programme on Ismail Kadare's impact on Albanian literature, made after his death.
2025-07-09 - Skanderbeg on horseback in Skopje. The equestrian statue of Skanderbeg in the Albanian quarter of Skopje. His figure serves as a common reference point for Albanians across the region.
2025-07-09 - Inside the dome of the Et'hem Bey Mosque. The painted interior dome of the Et'hem Bey Mosque in Tirana, the neoclassical Ottoman mosque whose unauthorised 1991 reopening by ten thousand worshippers marked the public end of the atheist-state era.
2025-08-21 - Hoxha, the dictator next door. An Italian documentary on Enver Hoxha, the ruler across the Adriatic whose regime shaped four decades of Albanian life and whose repression is still argued over. It follows his rise and the apparatus he built around himself.
2025-09-01 - Statue of Queen Geraldine in Tirana. The bronze of Geraldine Apponyi, Hungarian-born queen of the Albanians, unveiled in Tirana in 2022. She married Zog in April 1938 and left the country with him a year later, two days after giving birth, as Italian troops landed.
2025-11-16 - Buthrotum above the Vivari channel. A survey of Butrint, the ancient Buthrotum, whose occupation runs from the eighth and seventh centuries BC through Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Venetian phases. The site lies on Albania's southern coast between Lake Butrint and the sea.
2025-11-26 - Gjirokastra marks twenty years of protection. Local television from Gjirokastra on the celebrations for two decades of international protection for Albanian iso-polyphony, first proclaimed in 2005. The town marked it with singing in the old quarter.
2025-12-20 - Festivali i Këngës 64 - Nata Finale (livestream). Official RTSH livestream of the Festivali i Këngës 64 grand final, the annual state song contest (since 1962) that selected Albania's Eurovision 2026 entry.
2026-01-01 - Over the pass from Theth to Valbona. A multi-day crossing of the Albanian Alps from Theth over the pass to Valbona and north to Cerem near the Montenegrin border. The route runs through high summer villages and empty limestone country.
2026-02-14 - Dua Lipa at a Berlin premiere, February 2026. Dua Lipa, the British-Albanian/Kosovar pop star, photographed at a film premiere event in Berlin in February 2026.
2026-03-02 - Skanderbeg Square at night, Tirana. The central square of Tirana after dark, rebuilt as a pedestrian space in the 2010s. The National History Museum and its mosaic front stand on its northern side.
2026-05-22 - Berat above the Osum. A walk through Berat, whose Mangalem and Gorica quarters and hillside castle preserve one of the best kept Ottoman townscapes in the country. The tiers of windowed houses rise straight from the Osum river.
2026-06-07 - Wedding procession through Krume. A wedding procession moving through the streets of Krume in Has, in the far north-east, in June 2026. The convoy of cars with horns and flags has replaced the horseback procession but the ritual is the same.
2026-06-07 - Memorial at the Qafë Prush crossing. A memorial at the Qafë Prush pass on the border between Has in Albania and Kosovo. The crossing was closed for most of the communist period and reopened only after 1990.
2026-06-07 - Partisan memorial at Krumë. The partisan memorial in Krumë, the small highland centre of the Has district. Monuments to the wartime resistance were built in almost every Albanian town.
2026-06-13 - Türbes and graves at the Bektashi World Center. Türbes (mausoleum shrines) and graves within the walled Bektashi World Center in Tirana, photographed in June 2026.
2026-06-14 - Flamingo Revolution protest on Skanderbeg Square. Demonstrators fill Skanderbeg Square on 14 June 2026 during the protests nicknamed the Flamingo Revolution, aimed at the government and at resort building inside protected wetlands.
2026 - Bust of Havzi Nela, Kukes. The bust of the teacher and poet Havzi Nela outside the school named after him in Kukes. Nela was hanged in 1988, the last public execution in communist Albania, for verses and views the state judged hostile.
2026 - Bust of Hasan Prishtina, Kukes. The bust of Hasan Prishtina outside the culture palace in Kukes. Prishtina led the Albanian revolt of 1912 that helped force the Ottoman government's hand months before independence was declared at Vlore.
2026-07-04 - Protesters fill Boulevard Dëshmorët e Kombit. Demonstrators of the movement known as the Flamingo Revolution occupy Tirana's central boulevard on 4 July 2026. The avenue laid out under Zog and widened under Hoxha remains the stage for Albanian political life.
2026-07-11 - Ye (Kanye West) performing at Eagle Stadium, Tirana, 2026. American rapper Ye (Kanye West) performing a major international concert at Eagle Stadium, Tirana, July 2026, evidence of Albania's growing role as an international live-music tour stop.

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