Gjirokastër

Gjirokastër is a stone city in southern Albania, tumbling down a steep hillside beneath a massive Ottoman-era castle. Its distinctive silver-gray stone roofs and fortified tower houses, called kullas, earned it UNESCO World Heritage status and the nickname "City of a Thousand Steps"—the old bazaar quarter is a workout of cobbled lanes and staircases, best tackled in sturdy shoes.

The castle itself, one of the largest in the Balkans, houses a collection of artillery and an old American fighter jet, a relic of Cold War paranoia, alongside exhibits on the region's Ottoman past. The Cold War Tunnel, a bunker built for Communist officials, is another window into the isolation of the Hoxha era.

Gjirokastër was Enver Hoxha's birthplace, a fact that shadows the town even as it's mostly known now for its old houses-turned-museums, like the Zekate House, with its painted wooden ceilings and defensive architecture built for a mountain society with its own codes of honor and hospitality.

It's quieter and less polished than Berat, Albania's other stone-city UNESCO site, with fewer tour groups and a slower pace. Good base for day trips into the surrounding mountains or south toward the Blue Eye spring and the Albanian Riviera.