Europe's most colorful capital, fresh off four decades of total isolation
A Communist-era capital reborn — Tirana's once-uniform gray apartment blocks were repainted in bright primary colors in the 2000s under then-mayor (now Prime Minister) Edi Rama, a deliberate, low-cost act of civic optimism after decades as one of the most isolated countries on Earth.
Albania's Communist dictator Enver Hoxha sealed the country off almost completely from 1944 until his death in 1985, breaking ties with first Yugoslavia, then the Soviet Union, then even China — leaving Albania more isolated than nearly any other nation during the Cold War. Tirana itself became the capital in 1920, but the country only opened to the outside world after Communism collapsed in 1991, and tourism is a genuinely recent development.