Explainer
Albania's UNESCO Sites
Four inscriptions: Butrint, the historic centres of Berat and Gjirokastra, the Ohrid region, and the primeval beech forests.
In plain language
These pages explain the basics — how the country is organised, how to read place names, why there are so many bunkers, and what the Kanun was.
Explainers
Explainer
Why Albania Is Full of Bunkers
About 170,000 concrete domes, built by a state that had fallen out with every possible ally.
Explainer
Albania's Population
The 2023 census recorded a resident population far below the 2011 count — the clearest measure of three decades of emigration.
Explainer
Albania's Geography
Twenty-eight thousand square kilometres, seventy per cent of it hills and mountains, and a coast that changes character halfway…
Explainer
Albania's Ancient Civilisations
Illyrians, Greek colonists and Rome, layered on the same coastline for a thousand years.
Explainer
Understanding the Kanun
A body of customary law that governed the northern highlands for centuries — and the part of it that everyone has heard of.
Explainer
Religion in Albania, Explained
Four communities, centuries of coexistence, twenty-three years of total prohibition, and a census question nobody agrees about.