Albania's city of art, beer, and Orthodox domes — at the foot of the Macedonian mountains
Korçë (also spelled Korça) is Albania's most cultured city — a place that sees itself as the country's intellectual capital, home to the first Albanian-language school (1887), the Albanian National Museum of Medieval Art, and a lively café and bazaar district that feels distinctly more European than the rest of Albania. The city sits at 869 metres in a highland basin near the North Macedonia border, giving it a cooler climate and a distinct identity; it's famous throughout Albania for its beer (Birra Korça, founded 1928, is the national brand), its Orthodox churches with Byzantine iconography…
Korçë's recorded history begins in the Ottoman period — it was a significant administrative and trading town with a large Orthodox Christian Albanian population, and became an important centre of the Albanian National Awakening (Rilindja Kombëtare) in the 19th century. The first Albanian-language school opened here in 1887, the same year as the publication of the modern Albanian alphabet. During World War I the French occupied Korçë and established a short-lived autonomous Albanian Republic (1916–1920), introducing the French educational system that shaped the city's intellectual identity. Un…