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.

A century in twelve dates

1. 1912 Independence declared at Vlorë 28 November, as Ottoman rule collapsed in the Balkan Wars.
2. 1920 Congress of Lushnjë; Tirana becomes the capital
3. 1928 Ahmet Zogu proclaims himself King Zog I
4. 1939 Italy invades 7 April.
5. 1944 Communist government takes power
6. 1967 Religion banned outright
7. 1985 Enver Hoxha dies
8. 1991 First multi-party elections The end of 46 years of communist rule.
9. 1997 Pyramid schemes collapse; widespread unrest
10. 2009 Joins NATO 1 April.
11. 2014 Becomes a candidate for EU membership
12. 2022 EU accession negotiations open

How it got this way

For most of its history the land that is now Albania was a frontier: between Greek and Illyrian, then between the Latin west and the Greek east of the Roman world, then between Catholic Venice and Orthodox Byzantium. Skanderbeg held the Ottomans off from Krujë for a quarter of a century in the 15th century, and after his death in 1468 the country was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, where Albanians rose high as soldiers, governors and grand viziers.

A national movement, the Rilindja or 'rebirth', took shape in the late 19th century. The League of Prizren in 1878 resisted the handing of Albanian-speaking lands to neighbouring states, and the alphabet was standardised at Manastir in 1908. Independence came in 1912, but the borders drawn by the great powers in London in 1913 left large Albanian populations outside the new state, above all in Kosovo.

The 20th century then delivered almost every form of government Europe produced: a short-lived German prince, a republic, King Zog's monarchy, Italian and German occupation, and from 1944 Enver Hoxha's communist state, which cut itself off first from Yugoslavia, then the Soviet Union, then China. When it ended in 1991 Albania was the poorest and most closed country in Europe; the three decades since have been a story of emigration, rapid building, the 1997 pyramid-scheme collapse and a steady turn towards NATO and the EU.

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.