Albania
Albania Geography & Climate
Geography
Albania covers about 28,700 square kilometres on the western edge of the Balkan peninsula, facing Italy across the Strait of Otranto — at its narrowest only seventy kilometres of water.
Mostly mountain
Around seventy per cent of the country is hills and mountains. The Accursed Mountains in the north, shared with Montenegro and Kosovo, are limestone, steep and among the least developed ranges in Europe; Korab on the North Macedonian border is the highest point at 2,764 metres. The Pindus range runs down the south-east.
Two coasts
The Adriatic coast in the north and centre is flat, sandy and often marshy, with lagoons at Karavasta and Narta. South of Vlorë the Llogara Pass crosses into a different country entirely: the Ionian coast, where mountains drop straight into clear deep water and the beaches are pebble in small coves. The change happens within a few kilometres and is one of the more dramatic transitions in the Mediterranean.
Lakes and rivers
Albania shares three major lakes: Shkodër with Montenegro, the largest in the Balkans; Ohrid with North Macedonia, among the oldest lakes in the world at over a million years and UNESCO-listed; and Prespa. The Vjosa runs some 270 kilometres from Greece to the Adriatic without a dam on it, and became Europe’s first wild river national park in 2023.
Karst and water
The limestone produces springs of startling clarity, of which the Blue Eye near Sarandë is the best known — a karst spring more than fifty metres deep whose bottom has never been reached by divers.
Seismic
The country sits on an active fault system; the 2019 earthquake near Durrës killed fifty-one people and damaged buildings across the centre.
Climate Patterns
Albania has a Mediterranean climate along the coast and a markedly more continental one inland, and because the mountains start close to the sea the difference is felt over very short distances.
The coast
Summers from June to September are hot and dry, 28 to 33°C, with the sea warm enough to swim from late May into October. Winters are mild, around 8 to 14°C, and wet — the Adriatic coast is one of the rainier parts of the Mediterranean, taking most of its rainfall between November and March.
The interior
Tirana, only thirty kilometres from the sea, is hotter in summer and colder in winter than the coast, and the valleys of the east more so again. Korçë, at 850 metres, has proper cold winters with regular snow.
The mountains
The Accursed Mountains and the eastern ranges hold snow from November into May, and the Theth–Valbonë pass is impassable outside roughly mid-June to October. Winter temperatures well below freezing are normal, and some northern villages are cut off for weeks.
Rainfall, and how much
Albania is among the wetter countries in the Mediterranean basin, with over a metre a year on average and more than two on the northern mountains. It arrives concentrated in the winter half of the year, which is why the rivers run hard in spring and the summers are bone dry.
The season on the Riviera
The practical consequence for a visitor is that the coast has a short season. Businesses open around May and close in October, and a November trip to Dhermi finds a beautiful empty village with nowhere to eat.