Libohovë

Getting there

car. A few minutes off the Drino road, across the valley from Gjirokastër, at about 408 m. No road distance is printed because none could be sourced; the straight-line gap is under twelve kilometres.

Parking: In the town, below the castle.

Photography

Best light: golden.

The castle reads best from below with the town under it and the Drino behind, late in the day. 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.

Libohovë sits above the Drino across the valley from Gjirokastër, overlooked by the castle that was built here between 1796 and 1798. Who built it is a question this page will not answer, because the source does not say and the attribution every travel page reaches for is not one anybody has shown us.

It is older than the castle by a long way. The archaeology points to a very ancient settlement that reached its height in the seventeenth century, and Evliya Çelebi, passing through late in that century, counted two hundred houses with slate roofs. Myfit Bej Libohova's house still stands in the centre of the town.

What survives inside the castle walls is not described by any source we could cite, so it is not described here either. Two thousand people live in the old municipality and around three and a half thousand in the wider one, and on most days in the year that is the entire population of the view.