Voskopojë

Getting there

car. About twenty kilometres west of Korçë and a thousand metres higher, on a road that climbs steadily and is slow rather than difficult. There is no useful bus. The churches are usually locked, and finding whoever holds the key is part of the visit.

Parking: Roadside parking in the village.

Photography

Best light: morning, golden.

Low stone churches on an open plateau under pine ridges, which want raking light. The frescoes inside are dark, and whether you may photograph them at all is a question for the person who unlocks the door. 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.

Voskopojë was, in the eighteenth century, one of the largest cities in the Balkans: an Aromanian trading town with a printing press, an academy and a reported two dozen churches. It was sacked repeatedly from the 1760s onward and never recovered, and what stands there now is a village of a few hundred people at 1,150 metres.

What survived is the reason to come. Several of the churches are still there, low stone buildings painted inside by the same eighteenth-century school that worked at Ardenica, and the gap between the scale of the painting and the scale of the village is the whole point of the place.

It is twenty kilometres and a thousand metres above Korçë, which makes it a cool afternoon in July and a plausible night in September. The churches are usually locked, so ask in the village.