Gjirokastra Castle Albania: Layers of History

Gjirokastra Castle in the mountains of Albania. Madison Wetzel photos.
Gjirokastra Castle in the mountains of Albania. Madison Wetzel photos.

Layers of History in Gjirokastra Albania

By Madison Wetzell

Knowing nothing about Albanian history, I looked around Gjirokastra with a sense that I couldn’t quite place it. It seemed strangely familiar but also unlike any other city in Europe. Despite its heavy stone architecture, the city clings precariously to the side of a mountain.

An American WWII plane on display at the Gjirokastra Castle in Albania. Madison Wentzel photo.
An American WWII plane on display at the Gjirokastra Castle in Albania. Madison Wentzel photo.

Its steep cobblestone streets are often more like stairs, winding higher and higher up the mountain towards the Gjirokastra Castle, which towers on a plateau above the city.

Traditional Albanian dancers.
Traditional Albanian dancers.

Once known as a “museum city,” Gjirokastra wears its many layers of history on its sleeve. The city seems to have played a significant role in every major European Empire since the fall of Rome – the Byzantine, the Ottoman, Italy’s expanded territory during WWII, all the way to the Soviet Bloc, which Albania’s recent dictator, Enver Hoxha, seceded from to practice his own brutal form of communism.

As a result, Gjirokastra is a monument to change and survival. The steep, slippery walk down from the castle to the recently discovered Cold War tunnels takes about fifteen minutes but feels like walking through 200 years of history.

The Gjirokastra Castle

The oldest of Gjirokastra’s monuments is also the highest up. The first foundations of the castle were built in the 12th century, during the end of the Byzantine Empire. I imagine the view hasn’t changed much in the 800 years it has stood above the city.

Farmland stretches out on either side of the dry riverbed that cuts across the Drino valley. The mountain range looms on the horizon in a blue-grey fog.

The Old Bazaar in the historic district of Gjirokastra.
Up close, the castle is immense.

The curved ceilings and towering brick archways make the dimly lit hallways both stately and ominous. In contrast, sunlight streams into the little garden within the castle walls, where people still light candles at the tombs of two Bektashi Babas.

The large courtyard is full of old brick rooms and archways falling into disrepair. Here you will find the clock tower, which you can see from almost every part of the city.

The courtyard also hosts an impressive stage where the Gjirokastra Folk Festival takes place every five years.

The longest hallway, in eerie lighting, displays the old artillery weapons abandoned by the Germans and Italians during WWII, reflecting the castle’s brief use as a military base and a prison.

In the courtyard, you can see the remains of a U.S. spy plane that was shot down in the region.

The juxtaposition of modern weaponry against the ancient backdrop is startling, but it’s clearly as much a part of the castle’s history as its origins. The oldest of Gjirokastra’s citizens can still remember the days when those who openly expressed dissent would be taken and locked up in the castle.

Traditional iso-polyphonic singers at the Gjirokastra Folk Festival. Gjirokastra.org photo.
Traditional iso-polyphonic singers at the Gjirokastra Folk Festival. Gjirokastra.org photo.

The Ottoman Houses

As you walk down from the castle to the Old Bazaar you’ll see the glinting slate roofs of Gjirokastra’s Ottoman Era manor houses. The roofs often weigh as much as the houses themselves as they’re built simply by stacking stone on top of stone until the house is completely covered.

Several of these old houses are open to the public, having been restored, decorated, and furnished in the old Ottoman style.

An office in the Cold War Tunnels.
An office in the Cold War Tunnels.

Zekate House is the largest of these houses, with massive stone foundations that lift the livable part of the house high above the city streets. Skenduli House renovated only recently, has also been opened to the public, and going there you’ll likely meet the descendants of the Skenduli family.

While each house is unique, the commonalities can tell a lot about the lives of the people who lived there and still live there. Each house has multiple sitting rooms for different parts of the year.

The winter room has no windows and a long, cylindrical fireplace built into the wall, sometimes hosting a heavy metal teapot.

The summer rooms have tall wooden windows and low couches lining three of the four walls.

Side streets in the old Bazaar.
Side streets in the old Bazaar.

 

Each house also has a women’s space accessed with a ladder or steep wooden stairs. The space, which can hardly be called a room, is caged in with wooden latticework so that the women crouched within could watch the men in the room below without being seen by them.

The decorations, from the woodworking on the ceiling to the embroidered tapestries and loom-woven quilts, are so detailed and elaborate it’s hard to believe they were made by hand.

The Ethnographic Museum, which is also located in a renovated Ottoman house and has the distinction of being the childhood home of Enver Hoxha, the former Albanian dictator.

It has a little display on how these items are made, showing you the raw wool and spools of thread. The museum also displays the traditional dress from the Ottoman period, with embroidered vests, breeches, and red tasseled shoes.

The Cold War Tunnels

Hints of the more recent past and specifically the legacy of communism are everywhere in Gjirokastra. The surrounding area was forced to industrialize but the factories were soon abandoned. Many people now make fences out of the sheets of metal from which the factories used to cut utensils so their fences have little holes in the shapes of forks and spoons.

a sitting room in the Ethnographic museum
A sitting room in the Ethnographic museum

In 2014, a labyrinth of tunnels from this period in history was discovered beneath the city.

The so-called Cold War tunnels were built by Albania’s communist dictator Enver Hoxha to protect his government from what he believed was an imminent nuclear threat.

The tunnels are all the more impressive because very few people in Gjirokastra knew they were being constructed.

The entrance to the tunnels seems ordinary enough, barred by a rusty gate in a little dead-end next to someone’s house.

Inside you have to pass through a second entrance, a door six inches thick made to withstand nuclear explosions.

With a wheel that locks it from the inside, the door looks like it belongs on a submarine.

Our guide with a big industrial flashlight took us to see the rusted generator and another great hulking machine meant to make the air breathable for long periods of time.

It was cold in the tunnels and pitch black except for the light of our guide’s torch pointing the way into ever more secret chambers. We came to a row of doors that marked the different offices of government – information, finance, education, public health. Hoxha intended that his government be functional even if a nuclear war raged outside.

Sparse pieces of rusted furniture lay strewn about. The kitchen was stocked with empty cupboards, the offices with empty filing cabinets, and the schoolroom with a few wooden desks. In one room, our guide pointed out the holes in the wall where a safe that once contained the most classified documents was bolted down. I was struck by how recently these rooms were full of secrets.

She reminded us that people who could be exposed by those documents are still alive and likely living in the city. She pointed out trap doors on the floor of the most important officials’ rooms leading to additional escape tunnels.

As we wandered back out, blinking in the light, I looked up at the clock tower on the castle and the steep winding road we had walked down and marveled at how much this city had seen.

Where to Stay Near Gjirokastra Castle

I stayed at Babameto Hostel, with comfortable, family-friendly dorms and private rooms in a great location just below the castle. Unlike any other hostel you’ve been to, Babameto is a restored Ottoman-era manor house and its history is evident in every room.

While the local food is great in almost every restaurant in the Old Bazaar, I would recommend Kujtimi, a charming, old and, well-known local restaurant, and Taverna Kuka, which has a laid-back atmosphere and a pretty garden terrace.

Madison WentzelMadison Wetzell is a recent graduate, writer, American ex-pat, and hopefully permanent backpacker, who just returned from four months in Eastern Europe.

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One thought on “Gjirokastra Castle Albania: Layers of History

  1. I loved how you described Gjirokaster. I went to boarding school there, and this brought back memories. Thank you

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