Sarandë is the capital of the Albanian Riviera: a cheerful seaside town looking out over the Ionian Sea, with a long promenade lined with cafés, ice-cream shops and fish restaurants, town beaches and, across the water, so close it feels within reach, the Greek island of Corfu. It is the great meeting point of southern Albania, a natural base for discovering the area's gems and the sea gateway from Greece.
Its big advantage is location: a stone's throw from Butrint, the ancient Greco-Roman city and World Heritage Site; very close to Ksamil and its turquoise beaches; on the way to the Blue Eye and the Riviera, with its hidden coves and white villages like Himarë. Sarandë itself offers Lëkurësi Castle up on the hill, with postcard views, archaeological remains in the centre and lively nightlife in summer.
This guide covers what to see in Sarandë and around —Butrint, Ksamil, the Blue Eye, Lëkurësi Castle, the Riviera—, how much things cost, how to get there by ferry from Corfu or by minibus from Tirana and Gjirokastra, and how to use the town as a base for a well-rounded trip through southern Albania. Sun, the Ionian Sea, ancient history and a Greek flavour in the country's southernmost corner.
Sarandë has ancient roots: the Greco-Roman city of Onchesmos (or Onchesmus), a port for the Butrint region, stood here, and its current name comes from the Byzantine monastery of the 'Forty Saints' (Agioi Saranta), from which 'Sarandë' derives. It was a Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman stronghold, and in the 20th century a small port that, under the communist regime, developed as a tourist and strategic centre facing Corfu. After the fall of the dictatorship it grew quickly into the great seaside town of the south. Its deeper history, however, is intertwined with that of neighbouring Butrint. We tell it on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Albania's Ionian coast: Greco-Roman ruins at Butrint, the ancient land of Epirus, Greek-speaking villages and coves that are now the country's top tourist destination.
Read the history of The Riviera and the south (Sarandë, Ksamil, Butrint) →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. There are not many in Gjirokastra, but the ones there are worth it. 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. Tap the cards below and have a look.
They depart from Gjirokastra, 25 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before it became the seaside resort it is today, the site of Sarandë was an ancient port. On this bay of the Ionian Sea, facing the island of Corfu, stood the Graeco-Roman city of Onchesmos (or Onchesmus), which served as a port for the region and for the neighbouring territory of Butrint. Its position was ideal: the point on the mainland coast closest to Corfu, a natural crossing for sea traffic between the Adriatic, the Ionian and the Greek world.
Onchesmos appears in ancient sources (Cicero himself mentions the winds of Onchesmos in his letters) as a stop on the routes linking Italy and Greece. It was an active port in Hellenistic and Roman times, tied to prosperous Butrint, the great city of the area. Archaeological remains from that past survive in the centre of today's Sarandë, though much of it lies hidden beneath the modern city. One of the most valuable finds is the so-called synagogue-basilica: the remains of an early Christian religious building with mosaics, built over a Roman-era synagogue. It shows how many different communities lived in the port in Late Antiquity.
In the early Christian and Byzantine periods, the town took on a religious character that would eventually give it its current name. An important monastery was built here, dedicated to the 'Forty Holy Martyrs' (in Greek, Agioi Saranta), Christian soldiers who were martyred according to tradition. The city's name, Sarandë, comes from 'Saranta', Greek for 'forty'. That monastery, now in ruins on a hill above the bay, is the origin of the place name that has come down to us today.
Like the rest of southern Albania, the Sarandë region spent the Middle Ages within the orbit of the Byzantine Empire. It was a cultural frontier between the Greek and Latin worlds, with a strong Orthodox imprint. After the Byzantine decline, the Ionian coast, with its ports and its closeness to Corfu, was fought over by the powers that divided up the Adriatic and the Ionian.
From the 14th and 15th centuries, the Republic of Venice extended its control over much of this coastline and over nearby Corfu, while the Ottoman Empire pushed steadily across the Balkans. In the 16th century, with the mainland now under Ottoman rule, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered Lëkurësi Castle to be built on the hill above the bay. Its purpose was to control the coast and keep watch over the passage towards Venetian Corfu, the Ottomans' rival. That fortress, now one of Sarandë's great viewpoints, was built for military and strategic purposes.
During the Ottoman centuries, the Sarandë area was a rural territory of small ports, shaped by both coexistence and tension between communities and by the nearby frontier with the Greek world. Part of the south's population spoke Greek and shared Greek culture, so the region would end up at the centre of border disputes between Albania and Greece when the borders of the modern states were drawn in the 20th century.
When Albania became independent in 1912 and its borders were drawn in the following years, Sarandë and the south became part of the new Albanian state, despite Greek claims to the region, which Athens called 'Northern Epirus'. That border tension, with a Greek-speaking minority in the area, would shape much of the 20th century. For a time between the wars, the city was even called Santi Quaranta, the Italian version of its name, a sign of Italy's influence in Albania in those years.
The Second World War hit the region hard. Albania was occupied by Fascist Italy, which used it as a base for its failed invasion of Greece in 1940, and then by Nazi Germany, with fighting and destruction in the south. After the war and the victory of the communist partisans, Sarandë became part of Enver Hoxha's Albania, and both its name and its development took a new course.
Under the communist regime (1944-1991), Sarandë had a dual role. On the one hand, its position facing Corfu, right on the border with capitalist, NATO-member Greece, made it a sensitive, militarised zone, dotted with bunkers like the rest of the country. On the other, the regime developed it as a holiday centre for Albanian workers, with hotels and sanatoriums along the seafront. It was during those decades that the small town began to grow into a holiday city, though within the isolation and shortages of communist Albania.
After communism fell in 1991, Sarandë went through the turbulent 1990s along with the rest of the south. That included the serious unrest of 1997, after the pyramid schemes collapsed. Rapid tourist growth followed. With the country now open, the beauty of the Ionian coast and the nearness of Corfu and the ruins of Butrint made it the leading seaside city in southern Albania and the gateway to the Riviera. Construction boomed, often chaotically, and buildings and hotels filled the slope above the bay.
Today, Sarandë is a lively, bustling city, especially in summer. That is when its long seafront promenade fills with Albanian and international holidaymakers, and with cafés, fish restaurants and nightlife. It is the natural base for exploring the gems of the south. Butrint, a World Heritage Site, is just a short trip away. Nearby are the turquoise beaches of Ksamil, the Blue Eye and Lëkurësi Castle, with its sunsets over Corfu. To the north stretches the Riviera, with its coves and white villages. The ferry to Corfu links the city with Greece every day.
Sarandë sums up the Albanian south well. Its history goes back to the Graeco-Roman port of Onchesmos and the monastery of the Forty Saints, and it carries Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman layers and the mark of a 20th century of communism and border tension. Today it is focused on tourism built around sun, the Ionian Sea and heritage. It has its good and bad sides, including unplanned growth and summer overcrowding, but it is still the great base camp for exploring one of the most beautiful corners of Albania.
