Tepelenë

Getting there

car, bus. On the left bank of the Vjosa about three kilometres downstream from where the Drino joins it, on the main road between Gjirokastër and the north. The citadel sits three hundred metres above the river, so reaching it is a climb rather than a stroll.

Parking: In the town below the citadel.

Photography

Best light: golden, sunrise.

The confluence is the picture rather than the town: two valleys meeting under a ruined citadel. 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.

Tepelenë stands on the left bank of the Vjosa about three kilometres downstream from its union with the Drino, which means the town looks out over two river valleys meeting. A ruined citadel occupies a point three hundred metres above the water. The Byzantines built a defensive tower here; it was developed through the Ottoman period in the fifteenth century, and again by Ali Pasha in the early nineteenth.

Ali Pasha was born at Beçisht nearby, and Tepelenë along with Ioannina were his headquarters. That is as far as this page goes on him, and it stops deliberately short of the story every other page tells: the sources consulted do not record the famous visit, and they do record Edward Lear passing through in 1847, so Lear is the traveller named here.

Its second claim is recent. The Vjosa was declared Europe's first Wild River National Park at a ceremony held in this town on 15 March 2023, which makes a place of nine thousand people the administrative front door of a 190-kilometre park.