A new long-distance hiking route is breathing life into northern Albania's kullas — fortified stone tower houses that once sheltered families through feuds and invasions, and now welcome overnight guests. The Tower Trail, developed by the Albanian Agritourism Association, links the Mirdita, Mat, Bulqiza and Dibra regions in the country's north-east, an area that has seen almost no tourism compared with the crowded coast and the northern Alps.
The route covers more than 100 miles and is designed as a nine-day guided walk through villages, high plains, forests and river valleys. Long stages can be split over two days or trimmed with a car transfer, and cycling and 4x4 versions are planned. Waymarking is still patchy and some scrambling through undergrowth is part of the deal — this is genuinely off-grid walking. Free maps and local history are available from Infokulla, a small museum and cultural centre in the town of Rubik.
The kullas themselves are the point. Built from limestone and mountain timber by skilled craftsmen, they date variously to the Ottoman era, the 18th and 19th centuries, and later — though many were confiscated under the communist regime (1944-1991) and returned to families in poor condition. Others emptied out during the mass migration to cities in the 1990s and 2000s, leaving many villages with only a handful of residents.
The trail doubles as an attempt to reverse that. Director Nik Nikolli of Infokulla explains that hospitality here runs deep — guests traditionally receive food and drink regardless of payment — so the idea of charging visitors has been slow to catch on. But it's working: 91-year-old Hajrija Qerimi in Derjan recalls a childhood kulla where ten people sat at the dinner table nightly, and homeowners along the route routinely wave walkers in for coffee, grapes, plums and walnuts.
Stays are the highlight. Kulla Hupi in the hillside village of Dushaj opened as a guesthouse in 2021 after owner Luli Hupi, a former miner, restored it room by room. He sources meat, cheese, honey and bread from more than ten local families, offers hiking, horse riding and cooking classes, and deliberately caps numbers. Later on the route, Butterfly Camping — three cabins and tent pitches in a canyon on the Black Drin River — offers fireside grape brandy and a similarly low-key ethos.
The timing matters. Albania's tourism boom has triggered protests over a planned luxury resort in a protected coastal zone, and much development is concentrated on the shore. The Tower Trail shows a different model: slow, small-scale and spread through inland villages that have missed out entirely.
For travellers, this is a rare chance to see rural Albania before word gets out — expect karst hills, caves and chestnut woods, and dinners of corn bread, fig jam, pickles and goat's cheese by an open fire. A double room in a kulla costs from around £35 a night, and bookings at the popular guesthouses already need to be made well in advance.
