Albania's most beautiful Riviera village — ancient Greek citadel, Ionian-turquoise coves, and the freshest fish on the Adriatic coast
Himara (Himarë) is a small town on the Albanian Riviera — halfway between Vlorë and Sarandë, where the Ceraunian Mountains (Malet e Çikës) descend steeply to the Ionian Sea, creating a coastline of dramatic limestone cliffs and isolated cobalt coves with water that rivals the Greek islands (frequently compared directly to Corfu, which is visible on the horizon 40km south). The town occupies both a beach settlement on the coast and an ancient walled upper town (Kalaja) perched on a 200m rocky spur above the sea — one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on the Albanian coast, with…
Himara was settled by Greek colonists from Corfu in the 6th century BCE — the citadel (Kalaja) was rebuilt repeatedly through the Epirus Kingdom, Byzantine, Venetian, and Ottoman periods. The Greek-speaking Himariote community maintained a distinct identity through all these periods; they are one of the Greek minority communities in southern Albania (Northern Epirus in Greek political discourse) who claimed Greek ethnic and linguistic heritage and resisted Hellenisation, Albanianisation, and Slavisation at different periods. The Communist regime of Enver Hoxha confiscated property and forcibl…