Visit Albania .guide

Shkodër and Lake Koman · place

Mesi Bridge

An eighteenth-century Ottoman bridge on thirteen arches over the Kir, with green water under it that people swim in.

August: ok. Hot and busiest, though this is not a place that fills the way a beach does.

The year · August is underlined

Mesi Bridge: viability by month
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Mesi Bridge

Getting there

car. North-east of Shkodra on the road up the Kir valley, at about 45 m. Shkodra runs on bicycles and is flat, but this is far enough out and uphill enough to be a drive rather than a ride for most people.

Parking: Beside the road at the bridge; there is no formal car park.

Photography

Best light: golden, sunrise.

The shot is the full span from the riverbank rather than from the deck, which is where the thirteen arches read as thirteen. 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.

The Mesi Bridge crosses the Kir north-east of Shkodra on thirteen stone arches and runs over a hundred metres end to end, which makes it the largest Ottoman bridge left in the country. It was built in the eighteenth century to carry the road into the mountains, and it now carries walkers and the occasional swimmer.

The water beneath it is the reason people stay longer than the photograph takes. It runs green and shallow over gravel in summer, and the banks either side of the span are the sort of place a Shkodra afternoon dissolves into.

There is no admission and no gate, and no opening hours to check. The season is set by the weather rather than by anybody's timetable: Shkodra is one of the wettest places in Europe outside the summer, so the months that work here are the dry ones, and the ones that do not are wet rather than closed.

Nearby

The arcaded nineteenth-century facades of Kole Idromeno street, the hills closing the far endAI imageShkodërThe northern hub: the castle above the lake, the 07:00 furgon to Theth, and the road to the Koman ferry. Almost every Alps trip passes through it twice.Rozafa's walls along the ridge above the plain where the Drin, the Buna and the Kir meetAI imageRozafa CastleThe castle over the point where three rivers meet, three kilometres out of Shkodër, and the one big view in the north that is a drive rather than a hike.The stone quay and wooden boats at Shiroke on the Albanian shore of Lake ShkoderAI imageLake ShkodërThe largest lake in the Balkans, a Ramsar wetland with pelicans on it, five kilometres from a city the whole Alps circuit already passes through, and almost nobody plans a day for it.