Krujë

Getting there

car, bus. About forty minutes north of Tirana and then a steep climb off the main road. Furgons run from Tirana's northern terminal; the last stretch up through the town to the castle is narrow and slow.

Parking: Paid parking below the bazaar; nothing useful inside the walls.

Photography

Best light: golden, sunset.

The town sits on a west-facing shelf of Mount Krujë looking down the plain toward the Adriatic, which makes the view an evening subject; the covered bazaar lane is the opposite, and wants flat light. Check drone requirements with the AAC before travelling.

Drone: not confirmed. Albania's registration requirement is reported differently by every secondary source, so verify with the AAC before you fly.

Krujë is where Skanderbeg held out against the Ottomans, and the town has been built around that ever since. The castle on the ridge holds the Skanderbeg museum, there is an ethnographic museum in an Ottoman house below it, and the restored bazaar lane on the way up is the most photographed street in central Albania.

It is forty minutes from Tirana, which is its strength and its problem. Coaches arrive mid-morning, the bazaar sells the same carpets and copper to all of them, and by late afternoon the town is quiet again. Arrive before them or after them and it reads completely differently.

The museums charge admission. The view does not, and it is the better half: the shelf the town sits on looks straight down the plain to the sea.