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Photo: JoraKasapi, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Once Enver Hoxha's house, it is a well-restored Ottoman house which displays clothing, kitchenware, tools and other cultural artifacts. The guided tour (available in Albanian, English, and German though availability should be checked in advance).
Gjirokastër Ethnographic Museum is a museum in western Gjirokastër, Albania. The museum, constructed in 1966, is built on the site of communist leader Enver Hoxha's birth home and offers an insight into the traditional lifestyle of the town. From 1966 to 1991, the building served as the Anti-Fascist Museum, but after the fall of socialism in Albania it was converted to house cultural artefacts and traditional homewares. The museum is open year-round to visitors.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
A renovated traditional house
House of renowned writer Ismail Kadare undergoing reconstruction.
It is the most visited of Gjirokastër's monumental stone houses. It is one of the largest of its kind, featuring three floors spread over two large towers. The house has been restored again (having undergone earlier restorations during the Communist era) and is kept open by its owners as a museum house. In addition to providing an interesting primer of the characteristic architectural elements of the city's tower houses, it offers a beautiful view of the city below.
This mosque is a true testimony of the communist religious ban in Albania. Spared from destruction from its religious importance, the mosque was transformed as a circus training centre only to return to its original setting after the 1990s in the form of a Muslim school.
The historical and geographical center of the city, the Castle is billed as the second largest in all the Balkans, and is worth a look. The Armaments Museum is located in the castle (separate 200 leke entrance) and contains a collection of mostly post-War era weapons, photographs and artwork: the main gallery, with its eerily lit corridor, contains two columns of large German and Italian field guns, remnants of WWII. The Castle also contains two Bektashi tekes, the stage for the internationally-renowned Gjirokaster National Folk Festival, a prison (now part of the Armaments Museum and available with an extra charge) and numerous chambers, some in ruins, open to exploration. A second museum gallery, the Zenebishi Gallery, features occasional free art exhibits. Underneath the castle is the underground bunker built in the Cold War.
This is a well-preserved 18th-century Orthodox Church.