When you arrive in Tirana, you may find yourself wondering exactly what made you decide to visit Albania’s capital. The traffic seems to only vaguely exist in a world of laws, with the lanes often closer to imaginary than marked by lines or logic. And that first major traffic circle as you get close to the city? Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Like many cities, the exterior of Tirana seems designed to repel visitors, its combination of prefab concrete shopping areas and industrial zones hardly a suggestion of just how lovely the center of the city really is.

Given the suggestion in traffic guides and the jokes from people in other Balkan countries when I mentioned that I was planning to visit, I could not have been more pleasantly surprised when I reached the center of the city. A compact, pedestrian-friendly (though certainly filled with aggressive drivers), green space awaited, lined with an eclectic collection of shops, cafes, and restaurants, all with little of the massive tourist infrastructure in place in so many other Balkan cities.

I can’t say that Tirana feels like a city with an enormous number of sites to explore—from Skanderbeg Square, I was able to explore most of the central attractions quite quickly. That being said, though, Tirana is clearly a city on the rise with new skyscrapers replacing old communist-era buildings, suggesting an optimism that the city can become a tourist or technology hub. Even the old pyramid build as a mausoleum to the dictator Enver Hoxha is being transformed into a location to attract, train, and retain young people in the tech sector.

If someone asked me to describe Tirana’s food and energy, I would say it somewhat rightly seems to sit between Athens and Sarajevo. With a vibrant Muslim population mixed with Christian faiths, food that combines the heartiness of Slavic fare with the flavors of Greek cuisine, and an identity that is distinctly, proudly, Albanian, it’s a city not to miss.

A few recommendations for when you visit.

I found the Art Hotel Tirana to be a perfect location to visit the city. With affordable rooms, an incredibly friendly staff, and just minutes from the center of the city, it can’t be beaten.
Bunk’art 2 is an excellent museum to learn about the paranoid bunker construction that dominated the end of the Communist rule of Albania when 147,000 bunkers were constructed to protect the country from an invasion.
The area around Skanderbeg Square is ideal to see the architecture from Albania’s past and future. With modern skyscrapers towering over government buildings constructed by the Italian fascists, the excellent national museum and striking Opera House from the communist era, and the Et’hem Bey Mosque, the square provides an excellent vantage point.
While there are a number of great places to get a great drink or meal near the pedestrian area near Tirana castle, the Fërgesë I had for lunch at Restorant Tymi may just have been the best thing I ate during the three weeks of my trip through the Balkans. You may think you don’t want to eat it, but you’re absolutely going to want to enjoy some pache one morning for breakfast, too, even if it is cow’s head stew.
Be sure to enjoy some coffee while you’re in Tirana, too. Coffee and conversation is essential to a well-lived life in Albania, with the country recently passing Spain as having the most coffee bars per capita in the world.