Researching Albania, you will repeatedly come across phrases like “underrated destination”, “undiscovered beauty”, or even “Europe’s unpolished diamond”. Sun-craving holidaymakers will love how warm it is, with daytime temperatures staying above 20 °C (68 °F) well into November. Visitors from places like North America and Western Europe will find it very affordable. The non-touristy, local character will appeal to travellers seeking less obvious destinations, and foodies are likely to fall for Tirana’s extensive café and restaurant scene. I also found the Albanian capital super clean and very bike-friendly, with plenty of cycling lanes in safe distance from main roads. But primarily, I was on the lookout for the famous, omnipresent street art, vegetarian options within the Albanian cuisine, and the local LGBT+ scene. While the first two I can count as successful, the latter turned out a sad disappointment, but more on that later.

Illuminaries – From Tirana with Love

Art lovers will particularly find Tirana a treat. It is brimming with street art, thanks to the former mayor Edi Rama, himself a painter, who kicked off the city’s visual makeover in the early 2000s. Local and foreign artists were invited to paint Tirana’s grey high storey buildings and quickly covered them with colourful geometric patterns. Another turning point was the launch of MurAL Fest in 2018. Now every year, over a dozen of artists from Europe and beyond adorn the buildings with their creations. Once grim and unattractive, Tirana’s buildings today are true works of art and tourist attractions in their own right.

The paintings are scattered all over the city. You’ll see them in bustling boulevards and unassuming side streets; on tall housing blocks and small electrical boxes. They also vary in subject matter: serious pieces with social commentary are just a stone’s throw from playful images, with occasional tributes to musicians (Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix) and cartoon characters (Tom and Jerry, Sailor Moon and more). To get the most of Tirana’s street art, I suggest that you plan a walking trail around the city using this map. It’s in need of an update as of late 2021, but can be a good starting point.

Franko Dine – Biblioteka

If you’re arriving in central Tirana from the airport by bus, chances are that you’ll quickly stumble upon Franko Dine’s Biblioteka (Library, 2020). It’s slap bang in the city centre, on the corner of Dibrës and Urani Pano Streets. Franko is a pioneer of street art in Albania, and I found it a fitting coincidence to have spotted one of his works first. Dedicated to Albanian writers Ismail Kadare and Dritëro Agolli, the mural pictures some of their books (and their framed photos) as well as works by Kafka, Balzac and Dostoyevsky. Napping on the somewhat cluttered bookcase is also an adorable ginger cat. Looking across the road to the right you’ll see Mother’s Care by German artist Andreas von Chrzanowski, who goes by the name Case Maclaim. It was created in the summer of 2021.

Case Maclaim – Mother’s Care

The first edition of MurAL Fest spawned such captivating works as Change Prospective by Chekos Art on Sami Frashëri Street and Madre (also known as Nënë or just Mother) by Uruguayan artist Theic Licuado on Komuna e Parisit Street. Licuado said: “In this mural I portrayed my mother, (…) the one that ties each knot of our family circuit”. Indeed, the said mother is tying a knot on a black ribbon, with a rather serious, yet patient demeanour. The following year, Mexican-Colombian artist Stinkfish painted Kathmandu Girl on Ymer Kurti Street, based on a photo of an actual girl, taken in the Nepalese capital back in 2013. Like all his creations, it uses bright, vibrant colours, with some psychedelic elements.

Theic Licuado – Madre

There are also at least two brilliant surreal works: Lucille in Albanie (2019) by Argentine artist Mabel Vicentef on Ramazan Shijaku Street, slightly north off the centre, and one of my definite favourites Il Perturbante (2018) on Selma Riza Street by Italian artist Alessandro Suzzi who creates under the moniker Gods in Love. The mural is part of a project in which he reinterprets Biblical events in a secular perspective.

Gods in Love – Il Perturbante

One of the more recognizable murals is the Heart Tunnel (Tuneli i Zemrave). It is exactly that – a passageway in a residential building painted all over with red hearts, including the ceiling. Unfortunately, visitors take the freedom to interact with this one, inscribing names of their loved ones inside the hearts or, worse, writing vulgarities right across the wall. It shouldn’t spoil your experience, though, unless you’re very prudish. The tunnel is located on Abdyl Frashëri Street in the hipster quarter Blokku.

An area called Komuna e Parisit is home to a series of joyful, cartoonish murals by The Weird collective, which sprang up back in 2016. Their blue, animal-like creatures grace the cultural centre Tulla and the nearby buildings. Take a few minutes’ stroll down the road and you’ll see two works from the most recent edition of MurAL Fest, Mbwana by Spanish artist Manomatic and Overseas Stories by Mattia Campo Dall’Orto from Italy. The latter is particularly charming, depicting a boy sitting on a tall chair partially submerged in water, reading a book. “Memories, experiences and dreams cross the sea, page after page”, Mattia commented. Both are in a prominent location near Haxhi Kika Street and you’re likely to spot them from far.

Mattia Campo Dall’Orto – Overseas Stories

“Bota po ndryshon shpejt, disa gjera nuk do ndryshojne kurre” (“The world is changing but some things won’t change”), says the tagline under Sismikazot’s Kapse Rrobash (Clothes Peg). The French duo contributed this piece for the 2019 edition of MurAL Fest. You’ll find it on Luigj Gurakuqi Street, a short, straight walk from Skanderbeg Square. It gives a sense of being unfinished and most likely it is – the artists admitted that rain disrupted the process, but the result is still very impressive.

Sismikazot – Kapse Rrobash

On my last day in Tirana, I tracked one of my favourite pieces, Unitet dhe Diversitet (Unity and Diversity, 2018) by French artist Yann Lazoo on Adem Jashari Street, near the Grand Park of Tirana. By portraying a diverse group of people in monochrome blue, enclosed in a colourful circle, it sends a simple, yet powerful message of interconnectedness. And it’s these socially engaged works that make the biggest impact. Franko Dine stands at the forefront of this with his thought-provoking paintings, often depicting marginalised groups, such as the homeless, the poor, orphans and disabled people. But I wish this activism extended to supporting the LGBT+ community, by far the most marginalized group in Albania.

Yann Lazoo – Unitet dhe Diversitet

Before coming to Albania, I was well aware of its conservative attitudes (which sadly is the case in many Balkan and Slavic countries), but didn’t realize how bleak the situation actually is. Although intimate same-sex relations are legal in Albania, with the age of consent being only 14 (one of the lowest in Europe), and extensive anti-discrimination laws are firmly in place, the country as a whole is struggling to embrace different varieties of sexuality. The gay community operates underground and one look on Grindr (social app for gay and bi men) is a bitter representation of this. Users with face pictures are few and far between. Even more worryingly, nearly everyone with a face is a foreign tourist. Local men are extremely discreet and seemingly scared of sharing “face pics” even in a private message. If anything, they’ll offer a video call, thus avoiding circulating their photo to a stranger. And that’s in the centre of Tirana, supposedly the most accepting part of the whole country. Situation in other places was even more dire.

Mural on Ludovik Shllaku Street

My attempts to interact with local gay/bi men were largely unsuccessful and a pattern quickly started to emerge. No one was interested in making friends and hanging out with a random tourist. My invites to go for a walk, coffee or drink were hastily ignored and replaced with offers of casual sex, often coupled with demands that I send nudes and host (or sometimes even pay!). One of the guys “brave” enough to have a face photo was a Norwegian expat, currently working and living in Tirana. He described Albania as an “extremely homophobic” country where gay men “hide and feel scared [and] are terrified to meet in public”. “It’s actually very pathetic”, he said. Another user, this time Albanian, but living in London, admitted that there is “no freedom for the gay community” in Albania. He says that Albanians care about the family name and having a gay child is “bad for their reputation”. According to him, many monsters of parents decide to kick a gay son out of the house, or even kill him!

Not a single LGBT+ venue exists in the whole of Albania, but the very friendly owner of my hostel pointed me in the direction of Radio Bar in Blokku which apparently is somewhat of a hangout spot for LGBT+ folks. During my stay in Tirana I didn’t come across anyone who could even remotely pass as a gay or lesbian couple. There are, however, organisations such as Pro LGBT and Aleanca Kundër Diskriminimit të LGBT (Alliance Against Discrimination of LGBT) working towards changing the hostile public attitude. The first ever Pride parade in Tirana took place in 2012, and two years later, the Miss Trans Albania contest was launched. But in the grand scope of things, the change is slow. It seems that for now, the only LGBT+ accent in Tirana – and that’s by a massive stretch – are the famous rainbow buildings in Wilson Square.

Please don’t get offended by this post. My intention isn’t to show Albania in a negative light, but to draw a factual picture of the challenges that LGBT+ people face there, based on my research and observation. If you’re one of those people, I sympathize and send you love. If you’re a homophobic or transphobic Albanian who stumbled upon this post, you must know that you’re contributing to oppression of a large community, people who may well be your friends, colleagues, or even family. I urge you to understand that you can’t build a healthy society if any group is stigmatized like that!

And if you’re just a curious traveller considering Tirana as your next destination, I would hands down recommend it! Let me leave you with these 3 tips.

- Have some Albanian lek in cash with you. Even though euro is widely accepted, I suggest that you pay with lek whenever you can to avoid being slightly overcharged. (Interesting fact: Lek is unavailable to buy outside Albania, but you will find a currency exchange on nearly every street in central Tirana.)

- Watch out when crossing the streets. Drivers in Tirana seem to have little regard towards traffic lights. They very often attempt to run over the red light – even with pedestrians crossing the zebra! (Interesting fact: Before the fall of communism in 1992, there were only about 3,000 cars in the whole of Albania.)

- This one goes for travelling anywhere, really, but is particularly important in a place like Albania where English isn’t widely spoken: learn some basic words and phrases in the local language. Mirembrema and faleminderit can take you a long way. (Interesting fact: Albanian is a unique language that doesn’t belong to any existing language group.)