Albania's Riviera capital — Ionian turquoise, Butrint UNESCO ruins, and Corfu ten minutes away
Saranda is the southernmost city on Albania's Ionian Riviera and its fastest-growing resort town — a place that a decade ago was almost entirely unknown to international tourists and now sees hundreds of thousands each summer for the intensely blue Ionian Sea, the ancient city of Butrint (20 minutes south), and prices that remain a fraction of comparable Greek destinations across the water. Corfu is visible from the seafront and reachable by hydrofoil in under 20 minutes; the Blue Eye spring — a surreally vivid natural pool — is 25km north.
Saranda was known in antiquity as Onchesmos, a Roman port. The modern name derives from 'Santi Quaranta' — Forty Saints — a Byzantine monastery that stood on a hill above the town. Under Enver Hoxha's communist regime it was a naval base closed to foreigners entirely. After 1992 the city opened, and the 2000s saw the first Albanian riviera development.