How to Spend a Day in Korça, Albania

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There is no better way than start your trip in Korça than with a Turkish coffee and a piece of cake. The best place to enjoy your breakfast is Komiteti, a cool café-museum located in the most beautiful place of Korça, Pazari i Vjetër. Komiteti is a roomy café with plenty of old furniture from the Communist era and known to be specialized in the production of raki, the typical Balkan grappa liquor.

Start your tour strolling through the narrow cobblestone streets of Pazari i Vjetër: this site was once the old market of the town and now, after a major redevelopment of the area, is the coolest district in Korça. Here you’ll find a lot of cafés and restaurants, and boutiques that sell typical souvenirs. Don’t forget to bring your camera so you can grab pictures of the gorgeously colored buildings of the area. Then, head for the old mosque behind the Pazari, which is the oldest in town.

If you want to buy something typical, head into one of the small boutiques of the Pazari and buy a bottle of raki for your family and friends, they will love it. Then, it’s time to eat, and the best place to go is Colonial Osteria Korça, a good choice for a quick lunch. The menu is full of Italian delicacies. It totally worth trying one of the pasta dishes, especially the linguine with seafood.

After lunch, head to one of the several cafés that line the Pedonalja, the most famous street in Korça. Then go straight to the Cathedral of the Resurrection: built in 1992 on the foundations of an old Orthodox church destroyed during the Communist era, it is now the largest and most important Orthodox church in Korça and Albania.

One of the most important museums in Albania, the National Museum of Medieval Art is just five minutes from from the Cathedral and totally worth a visit. The museum houses 7,000 items of historical and cultural significance and well-known pieces by Onufri, one of the most important Albanian artists of all the times. It is a must-see stop on your Korçian trip if you are a history-lover.

Not far from the museum, there is the Korça brewery, the most famous Albanian beer and one of the most important in the Balkan Peninsula. We suggest visiting it and then tasting one of the several beers produced here.

Return to the Pedonalja to visit one of the most important museums in Albania, the National Educational Museum. It is located inside a beautiful Ottoman-era building that hosted the first official Albanian school that opened in 1887 during the Ottoman Empire. Inside the museum, you can learn more about the history of the ancient Albanian language. Located on the Pedonalja, there is also another beautiful old building, the Romanian House, a gorgeous yellow palace where lived a Romanian family in the beginning of the 20th century.

Bulevardi Republika is a large street with an abundance of restaurants, bars, and hotels, perfect for a pre-dinner drink. Avenue 55 Bar, part of the Life Gallery hotel complex, offers a large variety of cocktails and finger foods. Spend some of your time here enjoying a beer or a cocktail and chatting with locals, then if you have time, wander through the enchanting little streets located behind the Bulevardi to admire the typical French-style villas of Korça.

The best place to dine is Taverna Vasili, perhaps the most famous restaurant in town, where you can enjoy classic dishes. Here, there is nothing better than savoring grilled-meat dishes, kërnacka meatballs made with with veal, egg, breadcrumbs, onion, milk, pepper, and garlic, and paçavure, a cake very similar to baklava made with filo dough, eggs, yogurt, cinnamon, syrup, and walnuts.

A great time to spend your night out in Korça is to head for The Beatles, one of the liveliest and coolest pubs of town. On the weekends, a couple of young singers perform typical Albanian music but also international songs. Order a raki (of course), and head for the first floor to spend a gorgeous night listening to good music.