Berat is built in tiers below a citadel that has never been abandoned since antiquity. Ottoman houses with rows of large windows climb the hillside above the Osum river, giving the town its nickname, the City of a Thousand Windows, while inside the castle walls Byzantine churches hold some of the finest icons in the Balkans.
At a glance
Berat sits in southern Albania on the Osum river, its old quarters rising on either bank below a hilltop castle known as the Kala. The town carries three names from three eras: Antipatrea under the Macedonians, Pulcheriopolis under Byzantium, and Beligrad, the White City, in Slavic tradition, before settling on its modern Albanian and Ottoman-derived name. Its best-known feature is the Mangalem quarter, where whitewashed Ottoman houses with large, closely set windows step up the slope beneath the castle, giving Berat its nickname of the City of a Thousand Windows.
Key facts
- The Kala: the hilltop castle and upper citadel, first fortified in the 4th century BCE, with the surviving walls mostly Byzantine work of the 13th century and later Ottoman additions.
- Living citadel: families still live inside the castle walls, making it one of the few inhabited medieval citadels in the Balkans rather than a purely archaeological site.
- Inside the walls: the Kala holds a number of Byzantine churches, two mosques, the ruins of the Ottoman-era Red Mosque, a Byzantine aqueduct, remains of a Roman settlement, and the National Iconographic Museum.
- Onufri collection: the National Iconographic Museum holds icons by Onufri, the 16th-century Albanian painter, regarded as the leading icon painter of the Albanian Byzantine tradition.
- UNESCO status: Berat was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2008, following the earlier inscription of Gjirokastra in 2005.
History
Berat’s site was settled from antiquity, known to the Macedonians as Antipatrea and later, under Byzantium, as Pulcheriopolis. Saint Clement of Ohrid is said to have visited the town in the Byzantine period, and it passed at various times under Bulgarian and Byzantine control before Michael I Komnenos Doukas, ruler of the Despotate of Epirus, built the major castle walls that still largely stand today, in the 13th century. The town briefly came under Angevin and Serbian rule before the Ottoman conquest of 1417.
In the following decades Berat featured in the resistance led by the Albanian noble Gjergj Kastrioti, known as Skanderbeg, who fought the Ottomans for a quarter of a century from 1443. The Second Battle of Berat in 1457 went to the Ottomans, and after Skanderbeg’s death in 1468 Albanian resistance collapsed, with the Ottomans completing their conquest of the country by 1479. Much of the older Ottoman fabric of the town was destroyed in 1830 by Ali Pasha of Ioannina. Albania gained independence in 1912, and after the Second World War Berat, like the rest of the country, came under the Communist rule of Enver Hoxha from 1944 to 1991, a period of severe isolation during which Albania declared itself the world’s first atheist state and closed its churches and mosques. Berat was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2008, three years after Gjirokastra.
What you see
The Kala dominates the town, its walls enclosing a scatter of Byzantine churches, two mosques, the ruined Red Mosque, a Byzantine aqueduct and traces of an earlier Roman settlement. The National Iconographic Museum, housed inside the citadel, displays the finest collection of Onufri’s icons anywhere, notable for their humanised faces and a distinctive intense red the painter used for saints’ robes, a formula never exactly repeated by later painters.
Below the castle, the Mangalem quarter climbs the slope in narrow lanes of whitewashed Ottoman houses with red tile roofs and rows of large windows facing the valley, the pattern that gives Berat its nickname. Across the Osum river, the Gorica quarter has a quieter, more residential character associated historically with vine growing and winemaking. In the modern town below, Skanderbeg Square forms the civic centre, near the small Berat Museum and the well-preserved 15th-century Leaden Mosque.
Practical information
- Castle access: the Kala’s gate stands open to the public; individual sites inside, including the churches and the National Iconographic Museum, are ticketed separately, with current charges and hours best checked with the local authority before visiting.
- Mangalem quarter: freely accessible on foot, with stepped alleys leading from the old bazaar street up to the castle gate.
- Onufri collection: housed inside the Kala; anyone with an interest in Byzantine icon painting should treat this as the primary reason to climb to the citadel.
Getting there
Berat lies inland in southern Albania and is most commonly reached from Tirana by shared minivan or bus, a journey of a few hours on the SH3/A2 road, or by car, which also allows a same-day visit to Gjirokastra further south. Shared minivans and buses also run between Berat and Gjirokastra directly.
Nearby
- Gjirokastra — a UNESCO-listed Ottoman town to the south, reachable by the same road or by direct minivan and bus.
Sources
- UNESCO
- National Iconographic Museum
- Berat Museum
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