A Visit to Shkodra, Albania’s Overlooked Capital of Cool

Not many tourists visit Shkodra.  

Located in northern Albania, at the southern terminus of the gorgeous Lake Skadar, it’s often referred to as the cultural capitol of the region.  Despite the romance texts carefully crafted by bloggers and tourism organizations in the region, tourism just hasn’t caught on in the area as it has along the Albanian riviera, in places like Dhermi or Ksamil, or the famous UNESCO stone towns of Berat and Gjirokastra.*  Even as the natural wonders of northern Albania (Thethi, Komani Lake, etc.) begin to gain more mainstream traction with European tourists, Shkodra remains a city whose purpose is utilitarian as the economic center of the region.

Northern Albania’s history, however, is the stuff of legends.  Northern Albanians are hardy mountain people, and long lived in relative isolation from the rest of the country (and Europe for that matter).  Due to that isolation, the indigenous culture that developed there was completely unique among all others around it – much like the Svan people in the high Georgian Caucasus.  The region is most famous for its Kanun, a foundational set of norms developed by Lekë Dukagjini, a fifteenth century Albanian nobleman.  In it are detailed social norms based on customs and tradition that include the gjakmarrja, or blood feuds between men of warring families in which one killing legally justifies another, and the practice of burrnesha, sworn virgins who renounce their female gender to live as men, typically when no male heir is present in a family.**

Visiting Shkodra with this historical primer greatly enhanced our time there.  It’s a topic for another post, but getting a bit versed on the history of a place reaps great benefits.  Without knowing its fantastical background, one might confuse Shkodra for just another gray, post-communist (is that a dirty word yet?) industrial city.  Though, to be completely honest, gray on gray on gray is kind of our signature aesthetic.

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Shkodra 101

Upon arriving in Shkodra from Montenegro, we met Eltjana Shkreli, owner and operator of Shkoder by Bike, a local tour company.  An urban planner by education, she was happy to regale us with treatises on block housing and the suppression of individuality by the collective, or just recommend a place for us to eat dinner.  She also happened to be our airbnb host.

Over the years, her curious nostalgia for a certain Hoxha-era aesthetic manifested itself into our apartment and a passive source of income for Eti, as she preferred to be called.  Nearly everything was original, and the apartment let us live our full communist dictatorship fantasy for a night. I placed one of the tens and tens of volumes of Hoxha’s complete works under my pillow when we went to bed, hoping to gain some historical insight via osmosis.

We ate at a local hole in the wall that evening, just a few blocks from our apartment on Edith Durham square***.  I can’t say that the meal itself was particularly remarkable other than its setting. We dined, bathed in Christmas lights strung haphazardly around us, in an enclosed patio with an astroturf floor.  The local TV station was showing what appeared to be sketch comedy that we couldn’t decipher for the life of us. This combination (along with the incredibly handsome waiter on hand) made for one of those moments of complete immersion – that magical feeling you get when you’re in a completely new place and getting all the varied sensory stimulation that comes with it.

Tattoos, Bunkers, and Rakija

Several years ago, I watched a Vice News video (don’t judge) about a Northern Albanian man who’d spent time in the USA, much of it in prison, and had returned to Albania to start a tattoo business in an old concrete bunker.  If you haven’t heard about the bunkers in Albania, here’s a one sentence background: Enver Hoxha (leader of communist Albania; very, very bad guy) was so paranoid that other nations would try to invade (he’d aligned with the Chinese, mysteriously, instead of the USSR during his reign), that he ordered the building of nearly a million concrete bunkers all around the country.  Playing “spot the bunker” is an endlessly entertaining game to play when traversing the Albanian countryside.

Harkening back to the memory of that short clip, I did some searching to see if he (I’m not including his name to respect his privacy) was still in operation.  A few Facebook clicks later, I connected with him (find him on facebook here) and started a dialogue.  We chatted several times leading up to our trip, and he graciously agreed to host us for an evening to talk about his art and work.  David and I discussed getting tattoos on this trip, but decided that Shkodra was maybe not the place to do it, as we hadn’t given much thought to the actual design. (Stay tuned, there’s a follow up to this from Ioannina, Greece!)  

With nothing more than a pin on Google Maps, we headed north from Shkodra to the town of Koplik, where the Keq Marku bunker was located.  He’d tried calling us many times, but I’m famous for nothing if not getting functioning SIM cards in other countries, so we were forced to dead reckon there.  Luckily, as we drove past, he was sitting on his motorcycle, flashing his lights at us.

We sat in his bunker and chatted for a couple of hours about his experiences in the USA, in prison, on repatriating to Albania, his family, his ancestors, his religion, and his art.  Cerebral is the word that could perhaps best describe him. He was full of very complex, even painful ideas that he could only articulate through his art. Inside this communist-era bunker, built in a time when atheism was state doctrine, he painted pictures depicting battles between good and evil, almost always with heavy religious imagery.

Albania is nearly evenly split between Muslims and Christians, but despite this there is a shared group of Albanian traits and customs that transcend religion.  Of paramount importance to the culture of northern Albania is the notion of hospitality – clearly evidenced by his welcoming of us into his sacred space. While he plied us with throat-scorching rakija, he sipped tea, unable to drink due to a medicine he was taking.  It was probably for the best – the week before he’d made some trouble for himself at the local watering hole, and was nursing his wounds in painful sobriety.

Wandering Shkodra by Day

We woke the next morning still buzzed from the one shot of rakija we’d had the night before – we really can’t keep up in the Balkans when it comes to booze.  We left our apartment early, hoping to get a nice walk around the city in before departing for Berat that afternoon.

We started off north, skipping the main tourist sites: namely the Site of Museum and Memory (closed the day we were there, it is a museum and art space dedicated to the victims of Hoxha’s communist rule) and the Marubi National Museum of Photography, home to the biggest collection of photographs of traditional Albanian life (honestly, the admission price was steep –  but everyone who’s been there raves about it).  

We took a right onto the city’s main pedestrian street, Rruga Kole Idromeno.  The city’s main mosque will greet you right away, and is attractive for a modern mosque, and at a scale I hadn’t seen elsewhere in continental Europe.  The pedestrian street is a nice place to buy some kitsch (we sure did), but the best comes when you branch off onto side streets.

While the pedestrian walking street is well-kept and new, the streets branching off it are more of an indicator of the struggles Albania is facing economically.  Buildings in the center of Shkodra’s are crumbling, left to the elements. Every third or fourth house shows some signs of renovation, which is heartening.  Even though this type of urban decay so prevalent in the post-communist world is astoundingly photogenic, seeing Albanians fighting to preserve their city is even more rewarding to witness.

Shkodra’s Venetian History

A short walk from the city center into Shkodra’s more industrial core will take you to the Venice Art Mask Factory.  During the peak time of the Venetian Empire’s dominance of global trade (between the 13th and 15th centuries), Shkodra became a devoted trading partner with Venice, along with other towns of the Adriatic like Split and Dubrovnik.  Among other things, Shkodra provided Venetians with their trademark masks, made by skilled Albanian artisans. Today, this tradition remains in plain view at the Venice Art Mask Factory.

Approaching the factory, I admit, felt a little bit like the set up in that movie, “Hostel” – abandoned looking factory, two young(ish) backpackers, deep Eastern Europe.  Despite the place giving a solid dose of murder vibes on the outside, try to ignore those red flags, and enter the building anyway.  David waited outside while I peered in, only to find a deserted foyer decorated by hundreds of amazing, creepy Venetian masks. Still no people, though, so I ambled upstairs to find a bunch of frazzled business people poring over financial statements and dozens of craftsmen on the factory floor in various stages of mask-making.  I eventually got the attention of a woman, who led me back down to the store. Have a look:

We left with two masks, both of which make us look like total murderers.  They are beautiful pieces of work, and aren’t particularly cheap – ours were 30 and 50 EUR.  But Valentin, this menacing guy in green above, will more than pay for himself as our house’s scary-ass gatekeeper, I’m sure.

Summing up Shkodra

Shkodra may not be the most conventionally attractive place, but residents of the city make up for it in inventive ways.  It’s not at all unusual to see houses of flamboyant colors interspersed among the aging concrete. When Hoxha gives you a concrete box, the saying goes, why not paint it pink?  Funnily enough, we observed this habit in Tirana as well – houses painted in loud, seemingly clashing colors.  For a really interesting read on what happens when your prime minister is also an artist, read this.

And about the castle…

Shkodra is also home to a very impressive medieval hilltop castle.  Rozafa Castle is probably the closest thing to a “normal” tourist attraction Shkodra has, but I have a confession to make: I get super bored at those types of places.  We’ve been to and ignored hilltop castles in Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia – and after so many, we just can’t bring ourselves to be captivated by them. It’s not them, it’s definitely us — maybe we lack the proper imagination to really transport us to a time when they were so vital.  Or maybe we just don’t want to climb a hill. (A special exception is Pocitelj, in Herzegovina)

Shkodra doesn’t carry itself like Berat or Saranda – or any town shortlisted for UNESCO World Heritage status.  It has no pretenses, and won’t offer the experience collector any single standout moment or monument like Paris and the Eiffel Tower or Siem Reap and Angkor Wat.  Instead, Shkodra is a sum of its parts – the blood feuds, Venetian masquerades, handsome waiters, and eccentric tattoo artists. Spend a few days in Shkodra, and you’ll understand.

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From Tirana, it’s very easy to get to Shkodra – just take the SH1 north, and you’ll be there in a couple of hours.  If you’re taking public transportation, there are ample buses departing from Tirana, running starting at 8:30am and ending around 6:00pm.  I can’t speak for personal experience with public transport in Albania outside of Tirana, as we hired a car to get from place to place.

We stayed at this airbnb.  The decor was wonderful, and our host, Eltjana, was incredibly knowledgeable – though the price was a bit steep comparatively for the area.  There are cheaper options in town, for sure.  If I were to go back, I’d like to stay in the magnificent concrete beast that is the Rozafa Hotel.

The main attractions in Shkodra (that we didn’t visit) are:

• The Site of Witness and Memory – Museum and art space dedicated to victims of the communist regime, with a particular focus on methods of surveillance. Closed Sundays, M-F 9am-3pm, Saturday 9am-1pm.  Unsure of entry fee.  Side note: Not to make light of a serious place, but if you go, let me know what the entryway reminds you of.  We were quite impressed.
• Marubi National Museum of Photography – Fantastic exhibition that showcases a permanent gallery of images from classical Albania.  Entry is expensive (800 Albanian lek this past January), but the design of the inside is impressive. Closed Mondays. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 9am-5pm.
• Rozafa Castle – Old castle ruins built by the Venetians – subsequently sieged many times by the Ottomans and the Montenegrins.  Free and open at all times. Particularly good views at sunset. If you’re into that sort of thing.

*On Albanian place names: Depending on the case of the sentence, place names change – Shkoder to Shkodra or Gjirokaster to Gjirokastra, for example.  I took about ten hours of Albanian language tutoring prior to visiting (learning obscure languages at a pre-kindergarten level is one of the windmills I chase in my free time), and got to the different case structures before throwing in the towel.  I’d like to think that the city names I used in this opening paragraph were all at least agreeing in case, but you’re guess is as good as mine.

Also, if you’re interested in learning Albanian, contact Elson on Verbling, an online language learning tool I use frequently.  He was a great teacher, and was incredibly patient with my 34 year old language learner brain.

**Great resources for more information on the Kanun, and the gjakmarrja include “Broken April” by Ismail Kadare.  I was very glad I’d read it prior to our Albania trip. Several films also exist on the topic, including the relatively recent “The Forgiveness of Blood,” by Joshua Marston, one of the uniquely immersive directors of our time (also director of “Maria Full of Grace”.)  “Sworn Virgin” interesting film on the topic of, you guessed it, sworn virgins! It’s streaming on PrimeTV.

***Edith Durham is a fascinating character in her own right.  An early anthropologist in northern Albania, she is controversial in that some believe her writing comes from an imperialist position. Regardless, she is a much beloved historical figure all over Albania, with many streets and town squares named for her.  Her most enduring work, “High Albania,” can be found here.