Sazan Island

Getting there

boat. Boats from Vlorë and Orikum, in the same roughly May to October season as Karaburun and usually on the same day trip. The island is still a military area and visits are organised rather than independent: you land where you are taken and you leave when the boat leaves.

Photography

Best light: morning.

An active military island at the mouth of the bay, with the Pashaliman base opposite: this is not a place to fly. On the ground the subject is concrete, tunnels and an abandoned garrison village, which want overcast light rather than hard sun.

Drone: restricted. A permit or an exemption applies here.

Sazan is Albania's largest island, sitting across the mouth of Vlorë bay, and for most of the last century it was a closed military base: Italian, then Albanian and Soviet, then Albanian again, with tunnels cut into the rock and a garrison village abandoned in the 1990s.

It opened to organised visits comparatively recently and it is still a military area, which shapes what a visit is. You go on a boat, you are shown a route through the tunnels and the ruined village, and you leave when the boat leaves. There is no independent version of this.

In practice it is the same day out as Karaburun and usually the same ticket. The season is roughly May to October, and while the crossing is short, the mouth of the bay is open water and it is calmer in the morning.