Southeastern culture city — old bazaar & serenades.
Southeastern culture city — old bazaar & serenades.
Korçë, in the southeastern highlands, is one of Albania's great cultural cities — home to the country's first Albanian-language school, a beloved tradition of love serenades, and a cluster of museums unmatched outside Tirana.
Korçë opened the first school teaching in Albanian in 1887; the building is now the National Museum of Education. Bourgeois villas, boulevards and cobbled streets earned it the nickname 'Little Paris', and its museums — Medieval Art, Prehistory, the Bratko Oriental collection, the Mio and Gjon Mili houses — make it a serious stop. Nearby Voskopojë and Vithkuq preserve Byzantine churches with important frescoes.
Korçë is the home of the Albanian serenade, the sung love poem of the early 20th century, still performed at the annual Serenade Festival. The restored Old Bazaar is the social heart; the local beer (Birra Korça) and dishes like lakror pastry are part of the city's identity, celebrated through a full calendar of food and music festivals.
Albania's most European-feeling city, and its most musical.
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