Albania's UNESCO Sites

Butrint — inscribed 1992

A city occupied from at least the 8th century BC to the 19th century AD, holding Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman remains on one wooded peninsula. Extended in 1999.

Historic Centres of Berat and Gjirokastra — 2005 and 2008

Gjirokastra was inscribed in 2005 and Berat added in 2008, as rare surviving examples of an Ottoman-era architectural type — the fortified tower-house town.

Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Ohrid Region — Albanian sector added 2019

Lake Ohrid was inscribed for North Macedonia in 1979–80; the Albanian sector of the lake and its shoreline was added in 2019, making it a transboundary property.

Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests — Albanian components inscribed 2017

Albanian old-growth beech stands, including in Shebenik-Jabllanicë and Lurë, form part of an enormous serial transboundary site spanning eighteen countries.

How these places survived

Butrint was dug systematically from 1928 by an Italian mission led by Luigi Maria Ugolini, whose excavations uncovered the theatre, baptistery and city walls; work resumed after the war under Albanian archaeologists. The site was inscribed in 1992, as the country emerged from communism, but looting during the unrest of 1997 put it on UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger until 2005.

The old towns of Berat and Gjirokastër owe much to an unexpected protector. In 1961 the communist government declared both 'museum cities', which froze their historic quarters while new concrete districts were built beside them — Gjirokastër was also Enver Hoxha's birthplace. That protection is why their tower houses, mosques and churches survived intact into the era of tourism, and also why the pressure on them since the 1990s, from neglect and from new building, has been such a concern.

And on the intangible list

Albanian iso-polyphony was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2005.