Tirana in 4 days

A former four-lane roundabout turned into a vast pedestrian square in 2017, paved with stone from every region of Albania and ringed with trees.

Begun in 1789 and finished around 1823, painted inside with trees, waterfalls and bridges, rare motifs in an Ottoman mosque.

A 1931 maternity clinic that became the secret police's surveillance centre, now a museum of hidden microphones, bugged bags and informers' files.

A central bunker under the Interior Ministry, opened in 2016, telling the story of the Sigurimi political police room by room.

Built in 1988 as a museum to Enver Hoxha, later a trade fair centre, a NATO base in 1999 and a nightclub, then long abandoned.

The district reserved for Enver Hoxha and the Politburo until 1991, now full of cafés; the dictator's villa still stands, empty and closed.

A nuclear shelter of 106 rooms over five levels, dug into the side of Mount Dajti in the 1970s for Hoxha and the high command.

A 4.7-kilometre ride from Tirana's eastern edge up to about 1,000 metres on Mount Dajti in fifteen minutes.