Tirana

The capital, with a population of over half a million and growing more cosmopolitan with new restaurants, shops, and galleries joining the almost surrealist pastiche of testaments to the city’s past. Here, eras collide. We’ll visit Skanderbeg Square, recently renovated with new fountains and rosy granite paving, and home to an 18th-century mosque and minaret, a domed Albanian Orthodox church, a set of government buildings that echo the fascist architecture of Mussolini’s Italy and a Brutalist monolith that houses the National Historical Museum. We'll see the newly opened Secret Surveillance Museum and Bunk’Art, Dictator Hoxha’s five-story underground nuclear bunker.

We’ll spend the first two nights at the centrally located Rogner, an extremely comfortable hotel with a pool and spa.