Elbasan in half a day: castle walls, ballokume and a very good coffee

Elbasan is an hour from Tirana on a good road, and almost nobody stops. The city wears its history awkwardly — a Roman fortress with apartment blocks growing out of it, an Ottoman quarter half-restored, a clock tower that has been rebuilt more times than anyone can agree on. That awkwardness is exactly what makes it worth four hours of your trip.

Start inside the walls

The fortress was built under Justinian in the sixth century, refortified by Sultan Mehmed II in 1466, and never quite abandoned since. People still live inside it. You walk in through a gap in a fifteen-hundred-year-old wall and find laundry lines, a barber, a school.

What to actually look at

1. The southern wall, where the Roman courses are visible under the Ottoman repairs — the stone changes colour halfway up.
2. The King's Mosque (Xhamia e Mbretit), 1492, in the quiet corner of the citadel.
3. The 19th-century Orthodox cathedral, three minutes' walk and a completely different century.

Everything here has been knocked down and rebuilt at least twice. That is not a complaint — it is the reason there is anything left at all.

Then eat ballokume

Elbasan's contribution to Albanian food is two things, and they could not be less alike. Tavë Elbasani is lamb baked under a lid of yoghurt and egg, served everywhere in the country and named after this city. Ballokume are dense corn-flour biscuits, made with butter and beaten over a wood fire, traditionally only for Summer Day on 14 March — though the bakeries near the fortress gate have long since given up on that rule.

Where: the bakeries on Rruga Qemal Stafa, immediately outside the castle's western gate. Buy them by weight, not by the box.

Getting there and away

Four hours is enough. Five, if you sit in the square with a coffee afterwards and watch the city not perform for anyone — which is, honestly, the best thing it does.