Albania in Five Minutes

Where it is

Albania sits on the eastern side of the Adriatic and Ionian seas, with Montenegro to the north-west, Kosovo to the north-east, North Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south. It is about 28,700 km² — roughly the size of Belgium or the US state of Maryland — and about 70% of it is hills and mountains.

Who lives there

The 2023 census recorded about 2.4 million residents, sharply down on 2011, because emigration has been very high. Roughly a third of the population lives in Tirana County. The language is Albanian, which is its own branch of the Indo-European family with no close living relative.

What happened

Illyrians, Greek colonies, Rome, Byzantium, then almost five centuries in the Ottoman Empire. Independence was declared at Vlorë on 28 November 1912. After the Second World War, Enver Hoxha's communist government ruled until 1991, banning religion in 1967 and building about 170,000 bunkers. Albania joined NATO in 2009 and became an EU candidate in 2014.

What it runs on

Services and tourism above all, plus construction, agriculture, energy and money sent home by Albanians abroad. Almost all electricity comes from hydropower, which means a dry year is an economic event. Italy is by far the largest trading partner.

Four things that surprise people

• Albania has four historic religious communities that have coexisted for centuries — and it was the only country in the world to ban religion outright.
• It sheltered Jewish refugees during the Second World War under the customary obligation of besa, and ended the war with more Jews than it began with.
• The coast is pebble in the south and sand in the north, and the difference matters more than any other single fact about an Albanian beach holiday.
• It is much more mountainous than the beach photographs suggest — the highest point is 2,764 m.