Museum-City of Gjirokastra and Old Town of Corfu starting at Gjirokastër

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Museum-City of Gjirokastra

   Gjirokastër is a city of stone, and it makes you look up. Houses with thick walls and slate roofs, many built as tower-like fortified homes called kulla, climb the steep hillside under a huge castle, and the cobbled lanes that link them are so slanted that you will think twice about riding up them. The old town was recognised by UNESCO in 2005 as a rare surviving example of an Ottoman town with its character intact, and it has a dignified, slightly melancholy air.

   Read the complete Museum-City of Gjirokastra write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Museum-City of Gjirokastra is where the day begins. Next is Butrint.

2. 2. Butrint

   At the southern tip of Albania, on a wooded headland between a lagoon and the narrow Vivari channel, the ruins of Butrint have been layering up for close to three thousand years. Greek colonists from Corfu, just across the strait, built a sanctuary and a theatre here; the Romans made it a colony and added baths, an aqueduct and villas; the Byzantines raised a great baptistery with a mosaic floor of birds and animals; and the Venetians left a fortified tower and a triangular castle by the water. Wandering the shaded paths among laurel and eucalyptus, you move from one century to the next in a few steps, with frogs croaking in the flooded parts of the agora and the lagoon glinting through the trees. The site has been on the UNESCO list since 1992 and is the heart of a national park.

   Read the complete Butrint write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Butrint comes up about 68 km into the recorded legs. Next is Old Town of Corfu.

3. 3. Old Town of Corfu

   Corfu is where the Greek world met Venice, and the old town shows it in every lane. For more than four centuries, from the late fourteenth century to the end of the eighteenth, the island belonged to the Venetian Republic, which fortified it against the Ottomans, so the town has two great fortresses, tall narrow houses with washing lines, and a maze of alleys called kantounia, which are cooler and more intimate than any grand boulevard. UNESCO listed the old town in 2007. The French arrived briefly under Napoleon and left the Liston, an arcade modelled on Paris's Rue de Rivoli, and the British, who ruled the islands from 1815 to 1864, left cricket, which is still played on the Spianada, the broad green esplanade by the sea, and ginger beer, called tsitsibira.

   Read the complete Old Town of Corfu write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 121 km into the recorded legs you reach Old Town of Corfu. Next is back through Butrint.

4. 4. back through Butrint

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Butrint write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Butrint, late in the day. Next is Museum-City of Gjirokastra.

5. 5. Museum-City of Gjirokastra

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Museum-City of Gjirokastra write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Museum-City of Gjirokastra. That is the ride.