Himara and the neighbouring villages - especially Dhërmi, Palasa, Gjileka, Dhërmi, Ilias, Gjipa, Vuno, Jala, Pilur and Kudhës - have always been popular holiday destinations for Albanians from home and abroad and in recent years also increasingly for European tourists.

It is therefore no wonder that in recent years numerous hotels, apartment buildings, restaurants and shops have been built in these places. Similar to developments in other countries, the rapid growth means that the infrastructure is often barely able to cope with the onslaught of tourists in summer, which is not a problem for self-sufficient campers.

A dream destination for beach-loving tourists - the sandy beach

Himara and the surrounding villages are far removed from the rest of the country due to the Ceraunian Mountains. The numerous bays here offer wide sandy beaches, which show correspondingly few tourists in the off-season. The beaches are only well attended in the high season, although this is far from the numbers in Spain or Italy.

The only real connection to the interior is via the SH8 national road, which is very winding along the coast. Similar to the route from Kaş to Yeşilköy in Turkey, here it is the attractive Kaputaş Beach section that attracts numerous guests. It often takes more than two hours to travel the 70-kilometer route over the Llogara Pass to the city of Vlora. Thanks to this isolation, nature on the Albanian Riviera is still relatively untouched despite the rapidly increasing development, as even commercial ships rarely visit the port of Himara. It is mostly used only by fishing boats and excursion boats.

Almost deserted in autumn and spring

Outside of the summer holiday season, there is very little going on in and around Himara, so the beaches are almost deserted.

The villages are now mainly inhabited by older people - many young people work and live in nearby Greece, for example on the island of Corfu.

Himara was once a small town on the mountain slopes on the Ionian Sea coast, but it was always the political and economic centre of the Albanian Riviera, the remote stretch of coast north of Saranda to the Adriatic.

The Bashkia of Himara covers the entire Riviera, which is why when people talk about Himara, they often also mean surrounding places such as Dhërmi.

The new tourist district of Himara is located directly on the sea in a long bay with a sandy beach. This district has grown significantly in the 21st century due to booming tourism. Old Himara is located a little inland on a hill.

It is characterized by old stone houses and steep, narrow and therefore car-free streets. There was always enough groundwater on the hill for settlement and with a view of the sea, it was easier to defend yourself against attacks from the sea. From the land side, the mountains in the hinterland offered sufficient protection. That is why the first settlement was established here in ancient times.

The archaeological eras can be traced back to around 3500 years ago

The region around Himara has been inhabited for a very long time, so it is also of great interest to archaeologically interested travellers, although it has not yet been sufficiently researched. Three tumuli were discovered near Himara, which are probably around 3500 years old. The origin of the first inhabitants of Himara is also not completely clear. Parts of the fortifications of Old Himara are dated to the 4th to 3rd century BC. In the 2nd century BC, the area was conquered by the Romans and initially added to the province of Macedonia. During the civil war, Julius Caesar's army marched from Oricum past Himara to Greece after landing a few kilometres to the north. When the Roman Empire was finally divided in 395, Epirus and with-it Himara fell to the Greek-influenced Byzantine Eastern Empire.

Ottomans also try to get to Himara

After the 4th Crusade, the rule of Byzantium on the Ionian Sea collapsed. The successor state here was the Despotate of Epirus, whose eventful fate Himara shared until the second half of the 13th century. Since then, the Himariots maintained their own fleet, which they used to protect their territory as well as for piracy. Himara itself - the village on the mountain - was heavily fortified. Presumably in 1277, Himara came under the rule of the Neapolitan King Charles of Anjou.

At the end of the 14th century, the Ottomans began conquering the Christian dominions in what is now southern Albania. By 1420, the entire region - apart from Himara and the Venetian Butrint - was under Turkish control.

Conflicts between Albanians and Greeks

Since time immemorial, numerous members of the Greek minority have lived in Himara, which has occasionally led to conflicts. However, there are no exact figures on the division of the population groups. The majority of residents of the villages of Himara, Dhërmi and Palasa still communicate in Greek in everyday life, while in Ilias, Vuno, Qeparo, Kudhës and Pilur, Albanian is mainly spoken. While the Albanian language dominated in public during the communist era, there has been a clear renaissance of Greek in Himara since then. Labor migration to Greece plays a major role in this. The migrant workers from the south of Albania, some of whom return to their homeland several times a year, some only on vacation, also bring Greek influences with them. There has been a Greek school in Himara since 2009.

In 2023, Himara became an international political issue again after the Greek-born opposition candidate Fredi Beleri was arrested for vote buying in the run-up to the 2023 local elections. Beleri still received the most votes, but six months later he was still not sworn in. Greece therefore blocked the start of Albania's accession negotiations with the European Union.

Destinations in the area around Himara

A few kilometres south of Himara, in the bay of Porto Palermo, on a small peninsula, there is a fortress that is said to have been built by Tepedelenli Ali Pasha at the beginning of the 19th century. However, it is assumed that it is much older and was probably built by the Republic of Venice at around the same time as the similarly constructed fortress in Butrint.

Also there, in a military restricted area but clearly visible from the fortress and the coastal road, is a former Soviet-Albanian submarine base with a submarine bunker dug into the rock.

Apart from agriculture and tourists in the summer, there are hardly any sources of income. The few factories have been closed and the naval base of the Albanian Navy is half-abandoned. Fishing is hardly profitable, as the distribution routes are long.

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