For many, Berat is the most beautiful city in Albania: an Ottoman ensemble of white houses with red roofs climbing the hillside above the Osum River, with so many windows facing the valley that they earned it the nickname 'city of a thousand windows'. Declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco, it preserves two historic quarters facing each other —Mangalem and Gorica—, a castle that is still inhabited and a handful of churches and mosques that sum up centuries of coexistence between Christians and Muslims.
Its jewel is the castle (Kalaja), a medieval citadel at the top of the hill where, unlike almost any other fortress, people still live within the walls, among stone houses, Byzantine churches and cobbled lanes. It is also home to the Onufri Museum, dedicated to the great master of 16th-century Albanian iconography, with some of the most valuable icons in the country.
This guide covers what to see in Berat in one or two days —the castle and its churches, the Onufri Museum, the Mangalem and Gorica quarters, the mosques and the Osum Canyon—, how much tickets cost and how to get there from Tirana. A destination where Ottoman architecture, religious history and the river landscape come together in a picture that is hard to forget.
Berat is one of the oldest cities in Albania: there was an Illyrian settlement and a fortress (Antipatrea) here from Antiquity, taken by Rome in 200 BC. It was held by Byzantines, Bulgarians, Serbs and local lords before falling under Ottoman rule at the end of the 15th century. During the Ottoman centuries it took on its present form, with its quarters of white houses, its mosques and its churches, and it was an important Orthodox Christian centre within the Empire. That past of more than two millennia and its exceptional Ottoman architecture earned it Unesco recognition. We tell the full story on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Two World Heritage stone towns and ancient Apollonia: the Ottoman and classical heart of Albania, among Byzantine icons and fortified tower houses.
Read the history of The historic south (Berat, Gjirokastra) →If you only have one day, take a guided tour on the first one: it sets up the rest of your trip and saves you a lot of walking. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 8 activities in Berat. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Berat's history goes back more than two thousand years. On the hill now crowned by the castle there was already a fortified Illyrian settlement in the first millennium BC, taking advantage of its strategic position above the Osum River, on the route between the Adriatic coast and the mountains inland. In the 4th century BC, amid the wars and alliances of the region, the city was walled and given the name Antipatrea, linked to the Hellenistic world that then dominated this part of the Balkans.
At the start of the 2nd century BC, Rome was expanding across the Balkans at the expense of the kingdom of Macedonia and the Illyrian peoples. Antipatrea was taken by the Roman legions around 200 BC, in an episode remembered for its harshness, and became part of the Roman world. Over the following centuries, like the rest of the region, it belonged to the Roman provinces of the Balkans and benefited from the trade routes linking the Adriatic with the interior.
When the Roman Empire split, Berat ended up on the Byzantine side, on the shifting border between East and West. Its fortress was rebuilt and strengthened in Byzantine times, above all from the 6th century and again in the 13th, giving it much of the shape it still has today. The city became a contested stronghold, a mountain bastion whose control was key to holding the centre of present-day Albania.
During the Middle Ages, Berat changed hands many times, a reflection of the instability of a border region caught between great powers. It was Byzantine for long periods, but it was also ruled by the First and Second Bulgarian Empires, and later by the Serbs, who expanded into the area in the 14th century. Its Slavic name, Belgrad ('white city'), from which today's 'Berat' derives, dates from that time and already refers to the pale houses that define it.
In 1280-1281, Berat was the scene of a famous siege: the troops of the Angevin king Charles of Anjou, who ruled southern Italy and hoped to expand into the Balkans, besieged the fortress, then in Byzantine hands. The stronghold's resistance and the arrival of a Byzantine relief army thwarted the Angevin attempt, in one of the most important military episodes in the region's medieval history. The city remained a coveted prize in the wars between Byzantines, Angevins, Serbs and local lords.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, as power fragmented after the Byzantine decline, Berat was controlled by Albanian noble families such as the Muzaka. It was a period of small lordships and shifting alliances, typical of Albania before the Ottoman conquest. But, as in the rest of the Balkans, the unstoppable advance of the Ottoman Empire would eventually prevail over this mountain 'white city' too.
At the end of the 15th century, Berat passed permanently to the Ottoman Empire, under whose rule it would remain, like the rest of Albania, for more than four centuries. It was during this long Ottoman period that the city took on the form that has made it famous today: the neighbourhoods of white houses stepped up the hillside (Mangalem, traditionally Muslim, and Gorica, traditionally Christian), with the large wooden windows that earned it the nickname 'city of a thousand windows'.
Berat became an important administrative, commercial and religious centre of Ottoman Albania. Notable mosques were built, such as the 15th-century King's Mosque (Xhamia Mbret), with its Halveti dervish complex, and the 18th-century Bachelors' Mosque, decorated with frescoes. At the same time, and this is one of Berat's distinctive features, the city remained a major centre of Orthodox Christianity within the Empire: inside the castle many Byzantine and post-Byzantine churches were preserved and built, and it was here that the icon-painting school of Onufri, the great master of the Albanian icon, flourished in the 16th century.
This coexistence of mosques and churches, of Muslim and Christian neighbourhoods separated by the river but united by the same style of white houses, made Berat a symbol of the religious coexistence found across much of Albania. The city prospered as a centre of crafts and trade, with its workshops, its bazaar and its Ottoman mansions, many of which still stand and are still lived in.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Berat took part in the awakening of Albanian nationalism, the Rilindja or 'Renaissance', which championed the language, culture and independence of the Albanian people within a declining Ottoman Empire. The city played a prominent role in the events surrounding Albania's independence, proclaimed in 1912, and in shaping the young state. During the upheavals of the early decades of the 20th century, Berat hosted important political assemblies and decisions.
In the Second World War, Albania was occupied by Fascist Italy and then by Nazi Germany, and a partisan resistance was organised in its mountains. Berat was important in that process: in 1944, with the country's liberation under way, the city hosted a congress of the National Liberation Front, dominated by the communists, which consolidated the power of Enver Hoxha and his movement ahead of the post-war government.
During the four decades of Hoxha's communist regime (1944-1991), Berat was declared a 'museum city' for its architectural value, which helped protect its historic neighbourhoods from the modernisation that swept away other places. At the same time, the city lived through the harshness of the regime like the rest of the country: the atheist campaign of 1967, which closed many mosques and churches or turned them into warehouses or museums, and the isolation and hardship of communist Albania. Paradoxically, that protected status helped it reach the present day almost intact.
After the fall of communism in 1991, Berat opened up to tourism and its exceptional heritage began to gain international recognition. In 2008, UNESCO inscribed the historic centre of Berat, together with that of Gjirokastra, on the World Heritage List as 'rare examples of a well-preserved Ottoman museum city', bearing witness to the coexistence of different religious and cultural communities over the centuries. The listing confirmed Berat as one of the architectural gems of the Balkans.
Today, the city lives largely from cultural tourism. Visitors walk or drive up to the still-inhabited castle, tour its Byzantine churches and the Onufri Museum, get lost in the alleys of Mangalem and cross the Ottoman bridge to Gorica for the best views of the white houses. Around the city, the Osum valley offers wineries (Berat is a traditional wine-growing area) and the river's spectacular canyon, which extend what's on offer beyond the old town.
Despite the arrival of tourism, Berat is still a living city: families still live in the castle, daily life carries on in the neighbourhoods, and the houses with a thousand windows are not a stage set but homes. That authenticity, together with the weight of more than two thousand years of history (Illyrian, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman) and the beauty of its architecture, makes Berat one of the must-see places in Albania.
