Where to stay in Tirana: the best neighbourhoods and hotels

All roads in Albania seem to lead to Skanderbeg Square. It is a huge, gently domed expanse of stone, watched over by the national hero on horseback and ringed by the buildings that tell the country's story: the delicate Et'hem Bey Mosque, the Clock Tower, the opera house and the National History Museum, with its heroic mosaic across the front.

For a first visit, this is the place. The hotels are a mixed bunch, which suits the city: a landmark tower that has stood on the square since communist times, a polished five-star with a spa, and small modern boutique hotels on the streets a few hundred metres back. You can walk to Blloku in a quarter of an hour, and to almost everything else in less.

For decades Blloku was off limits. This grid of leafy streets was where the communist leadership lived, guarded and closed to ordinary Albanians; Enver Hoxha's villa still stands on a corner. When the regime fell, the city's young moved in with a vengeance, and it has been Tirana's liveliest neighbourhood ever since.

Today it is all pavement cafés, cocktail bars, rooftop terraces and restaurants that stay busy until the small hours. Hotels are stylish and mostly small: boutique places with garden terraces and spas, and one with a casino and nightclub for those who never want to go to bed at all. Skanderbeg Square is about 15 minutes away on foot. Light sleepers, pick a side street.

The Boulevard of the Martyrs of the Nation runs dead straight from Skanderbeg Square to the university, a ceremonial avenue laid out in the Italian period and lined with ministries in ochre and red. Along the way it passes the Pyramid, built as a museum to the dictator and now a sloping climbing frame for the whole city.

This is where diplomats and business travellers stay, and where you will find Tirana’s most dependable hotels. One has a large garden and an outdoor pool open through the summer; another occupies a 1938 rationalist building that once housed the foreign ministry; a big five-star at the far end sits within a shopping and entertainment complex. Blloku is just to the west, the square a flat walk north.

Step north and east of Skanderbeg Square and Tirana gets older and lower. A few lanes of Ottoman-era houses survive between the newer blocks, and the New Bazaar, a restored market square with painted facades, is the place to buy mountain honey and olives by day and eat grilled meat under the arcades by night.

The hotels here are smaller and often cheaper than those on the boulevard, without being any less central. Look for a contemporary boutique hotel close to the National Museum and the theatre, a modern hotel just off Zogu I Boulevard, and a traditional house with a rooftop bar and wide city views. It is a fine base if you prefer neighbourhood cafés to cocktail lounges.

At the southern end of the boulevard the city gives way to trees. The Grand Park wraps around the Artificial Lake, and on warm evenings half of Tirana is here, walking the shore path, pushing prams or drinking coffee at the lakeside cafés.

The surrounding districts are among the smartest in the city, home to embassies and good restaurants, and the hotels are correspondingly calm. There is an elegant house near the park in a diplomatic neighbourhood, a quiet hotel a short walk from the Archaeological Museum, and one inside a complex known for its large wellness centre. Blloku is a walk or a short taxi ride away when you want noise.

Tirana in July is hot, and the centre has very few swimming pools. The answer lies a few kilometres out, where newer hotels on the hillsides and along the approach roads have room for pools, gardens, spa areas and free parking.

Choose from a resort on the slopes east of the city with an outdoor pool and a terrace, a spa hotel with an indoor pool and hot tub, and quiet four-stars with gardens about five kilometres from Skanderbeg Square. They make good sense for a road trip around Albania, or with children who need a swim. You will depend on taxis, which are cheap, for evenings in town.

Tirana's airport is at Rinas, north-west of the city, and a cluster of modern hotels has grown up around it. The best is right beside the terminal, with rooms looking out to the mountains or the runway; others nearby add outdoor pools, restaurants serving Albanian and Italian food, free parking and airport transfers.

The city centre is about 20 minutes away when the traffic behaves. Stay here for a late arrival or a dawn departure, or if you are picking up a hire car and heading straight for the beaches of Durrës or the mountains. For sightseeing, sleep in town.