Explicador
Albania in Five Minutes
Everything you need to hold the country in your head: where it is, who lives there, what happened, and what it runs on.
Em linguagem simples
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.
Explicadores
15
Explicador
How Albania Is Divided Up
Twelve counties, sixty-one municipalities, and the 2014 reform that abolished nearly four hundred communes.
Explicador
Reading Albanian Place Names
Why the same town appears as Vlorë and Vlora, and what the endings tell you.
Explicador
Albania's UNESCO Sites
Four inscriptions: Butrint, the historic centres of Berat and Gjirokastra, the Ohrid region, and the primeval beech…
Explicador
Why Albania Is Full of Bunkers
About 170,000 concrete domes, built by a state that had fallen out with every possible ally.
Explicador
Albania and the European Union
Candidate since 2014, negotiating since July 2022 — where the process actually stands and what the remaining steps…
Explicador
How Albania Is Governed
A parliamentary republic: a 140-seat assembly, a prime minister who governs, and a president elected by parliament.
Explicador
Albania's Population
The 2023 census recorded a resident population far below the 2011 count — the clearest measure of three decades of…
Explicador
Albania's Climate Zones
Mediterranean on the coast, continental inland, alpine in the north — three climates in a country 340 km long.
Explicador
Albania's Geography
Twenty-eight thousand square kilometres, seventy per cent of it hills and mountains, and a coast that changes…
Explicador
Albania's Ancient Civilisations
Illyrians, Greek colonists and Rome, layered on the same coastline for a thousand years.
Explicador
Understanding the Kanun
A body of customary law that governed the northern highlands for centuries — and the part of it that everyone has…
Explicador
Albanian Names
Why so many Albanians are called Skender, and what a surname tells you about where a family comes from.
Explicador
Money, Prices and the Lek
A currency most visitors never see quoted, in a country where a lot of prices are in euros.
Explicador
Religion in Albania, Explained
Four communities, centuries of coexistence, twenty-three years of total prohibition, and a census question nobody…