How to spend a day in Tirana, Albania's artsy capital

Albania has everyone talking. In 2025, the country received a record 12 million tourists, many of whom head to the budgetfriendly beaches of the Albanian Riviera. However, I was keen to see another side to this Balkan nation so, during a stay in seaside city Durrës, I hopped on a 40-minute coach journey to capital Tirana – recently added to Tui’s city-break portfolio.

Stepping off in Skanderbeg Square – a 90,000 sq m piazza centred around a statue of medieval folk hero Skanderbeg, who led a long resistance against the Ottomans – Tirana’s vibrant atmosphere was clear. A rainbow of paving slabs beneath my feet consisted of stones from different parts of Albania, and young urbanites sipped iced coffee under the country’s giant crimson flag.

To learn more about Tirana’s Ottoman past, I passed under the portico of 18th-century Et’hem Bey Mosque. Its modest exterior belies the prayer hall inside, resplendent with frescoes of symmetrical vines, waterfalls, bridges and Arabic calligraphy.

The nearby House of Leaves has a suitably botanical feel with pink walls covered in creeping plants, but its innocuous looks are deceiving: this 1930s building served as the headquarters of the Sigurimi, Albania’s secret police during the communist dictatorship from 1944 to 1991.

Today, its rooms are stocked with surveillance devices, lists of known dissidents and harrowing visuals that show how Albania’s apparatus of terror operated.

The subterranean Bunk’Art museums will also enhance clients’ knowledge of this grisly period. Going beneath Bunk’Art 2’s dome, I was shocked to find 24 rooms displaying everything from weaponry to a nuclear-bomb-proof apartment designed to shelter the minister of the interior and his family in the event of an attack.