The Lives Behind the City of Stones: A Gjirokastër Walking Tour

Gjirokastra's limestone tower-houses rise from the hillside like a fortified city from another era, and the lives lived within them are just as extraordinary as the architecture. On this walking tour, you'll hear the stories of four remarkable people born in this UNESCO World Heritage city – a guerrilla fighter, a novelist, a pasha, and a pioneering feminist writer. You'll also discover how Albania's communist dictatorship cast a long shadow over all of them.

The tour starts at Çerçiz Topulli Square, named for the Albanian patriot who led a band of fighters against Ottoman rule in the early 1900s and died in chains rather than surrender. From there, you'll climb through the old bazaar district, past the Obelisk that commemorates Gjirokastra's first illegal Albanian-language school, and along Ismail Kadare Street, named for the city's most celebrated novelist. You'll stop at Kadare's childhood home – the very house he immortalized in Chronicle in Stone – before reaching the Skerduli House, a 19th-century tower-house with 64 windows, four Turkish baths, and a wedding room of carved pomegranate motifs.

You'll also visit the house museum of Musine Kokalari, Albania's first female writer and co-founder of the Social Democratic Party, who spent decades in prison and internal exile after publicly defending democracy in open court. The tour ends at Gjirokastra Castle, where the views over the Drino valley reveal the ruins of ancient Antigonea, and where an American spy plane that made an emergency landing in 1957 sits on permanent display.

On this tour, you'll also have a chance to:

• Learn how Çerçiz Topulli and just seven fighters held off 200 Ottoman soldiers at the Battle of Mashkullore
• Explore the Skerduli House, a private tower-house with authentic Ottoman-era furnishings still in place
• Hear why the Ethnographic Museum remains one of Albania's most controversial cultural sites
• Follow Kadare's career from socialist-realist pressures in Moscow to political asylum in Paris
• Discover the Bektashi Order, a mystical Sufi tradition that counts Gjirokastra among its historic heartlands
• Uncover Ali Pasha Tepelena's buried treasure – and the flooded Greek excavation that made headlines in 2010

Gjirokastra rewards the curious, and this tour gives you the stories the stones have been keeping. Lace up comfortable shoes – there are a lot of stairs.