Albania's City of a Thousand Windows
Berat is a UNESCO World Heritage city of stacked white Ottoman houses whose eyes — hundreds of identical windows — stare down from castle-topped hills across the Osum River. It is one of the best-preserved examples of Ottoman-era architecture in the Balkans, practically traffic-free in its upper neighborhoods, and still largely undiscovered compared to the Croatian coast next door.
Berat has been inhabited for at least 2,500 years — first as an Illyrian settlement, then as a Byzantine fortress city, and later as one of the finest Ottoman towns in the western Balkans. It survived Communist Albania's cultural revolution relatively intact because the regime ironically preserved its historic buildings as 'museum towns' while banning religion. The citadel above the river still holds families living among Byzantine churches and Ottoman mosques within its medieval walls.