Albania

The Illyrians held these mountains long before the Greeks founded Epidamnos, today's Durrës, and Apollonia on the coast. Butrint, opposite Corfu, was Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Venetian in turn, and its theatre, baptistery and walls lie in a lagoon forest. The Roman Via Egnatia started at Durrës and ran to Constantinople.

In the fifteenth century Gjergj Kastrioti, called Skanderbeg, held back the Ottomans for a quarter of a century from his fortress at Krujë, and he remains the national hero. Ottoman rule followed until Albania declared independence at Vlorë in 1912. Zog I reigned as king from 1928 to 1939, and after decades of isolation the country opened to the world in the 1990s.