Krujë is a mountainside town north of Tirana whose castle Skanderbeg held against Ottoman armies in the fifteenth century. Today it houses the Skanderbeg Museum and an ethnographic museum in an Ottoman house. Below the castle is an old bazaar with wooden roofs and shops of carpets, embroidery and antiques.

It is about an hour from Tirana, so we pair it with lunch overlooking the plain, or with the coast at Durrës in one day.