“Albania in Gijirokastra and on Our Quest for Culture and Castles”

• July 13, 2020
• By Daryl
• 2 Comments

Traveling the countryside, we see castle signs, brown in color, which point to the cultural past.
Castles are all over Albania and they are fascinating. We are currently visiting the villages of Gijirokasra, where it’s many ancient relics are in their 50th year of being a UNESCO site. Today, Audrey Azoulay; Director of UNESCO will be attending the festival and celebration. We met her in Uzbekistan, as she was inspecting many of the same sites we were viewing.

 The castle has many museums and the grounds are in exceptional shape. Many military guns and equipment are on display. There are prisons, and one with historical items on display.

The Byzantine shop area was very interesting. The streets are original stone laid in patterns. The buildings and homes are mostly historical with stone roofing. 

As I was viewing the museums, I entered the prison. Small cramped rooms with small windows to freshen the ammonia laden air, so thick it would be hard to breath. In the wooden doors are small windows with a sliding door that opens to yell at the prisoners. The cells line the halls. There was a strange feeling that raised the hair on the back of my neck. The doors were creaking and noises could be heard. I put my ear against the stone walls. I could faintly hear chains and moaning sounds. The clicking of plates and screams came to mind. The past was speaking to me, maybe just in my mind.

The military museum was interesting with all the guns from the many eras of wars. Everything from tanks, to cannons were spread, throughout the castle.

A bakery was down a long flight of stairs. The intact hearths are still now, but lay as a reminder of the hard life, lived inside these walls. 

An ancient walkway from an adorning village outside the fort walls can be seen below. As we walked around the grounds, we saw cleaning going on, in preparation for the celebration the next day. One worker was cleaning the moss from the stone walls, and grounds workers are busy raking and collecting trash.

We drove our car through the hillsides and old neighborhoods, looking for a route to the aqueduct. We never found it, but we did find ourselves in some predicaments with only inches to turn around in.

The shopping market areas, with its restaurants, displayed locally made trinkets for sale. and was enjoyable and also fun to explore.