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Interior Albania: A Journey to the Heart of Forgotten Europe

June 21, 2026 by Amara Nambinga

Gjirokastra and Berat: two UNESCO treasures Europe has not yet discovered

Gjirokastra © unsplash - Drini Teta

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Përmet, the Nivica Gorges, and the Zagori Valley: Albania unseen by most

Between the historic towns and the coast, there exists an Albania that very few travelers take the time to explore. The Përmet region and its surroundings — the Zagori valley, the Lengarica gorges, the Nivica canyon — is probably the most pristine part of the country.

Përmet is a small town perched on the Vjosa, one of the last great wild rivers in Europe, recently protected as a national park. The Vjosa flows freely from its Greek source to the Adriatic, with not a single dam along its course. Its waters are unexpectedly clear.

Around the town, the trails of the Zagori valley traverse ancient beech forests, villages almost deserted perched at 800 meters, meadows where shepherds work according to ancestral methods. The Sheper hike toward Përmet, with a 1,200-meter descent, is among the most beautiful we recommend.

The Nivica Gorges

In the depths of a canyon carved at the edge of the Butrint National Park, the Nivica Gorges are among those places you wonder how they managed to stay so confidential. The limestone walls plunge into a turquoise river; the rock corridors seem carved to measure. In spring, the current is powerful and spectacular. In summer, natural pools form in the hollows.

The number of visitors remains low. That is precisely what makes it worth the detour.

✦ Our Team’s View Arrive early in the morning to take advantage of the low-angle light on the walls and to maximize your chances of being alone. In April or May, the gorges are at their most spectacular: vigorous current, lush vegetation, colors changing with the hour.

The Prespa Lake: at the crossroads of three countries

At the eastern edge of the territory, where Albania, Greece, and North Macedonia meet, Prespa Lake stretches its waters across a landscape from another era. Inscribed on UNESCO’s heritage list for its transboundary dimension, the site houses a troglodyte church carved into the rock, decorated with remarkable frescoes, accessible after an easy walk. A view of the island of Golem Grad, distant mountains, and a lake that almost no tour itineraries mention.

Local fishermen work with techniques handed down from generation to generation. The region is designated a nature reserve. Few places in Europe are as silent.

Lac de Prespa © unsplash - Nikos Vlachos

The besa: hospitality as a moral commitment

Travelers returning from Albania almost always speak of the same thing — and it isn’t always what they had imagined before leaving.

The Albanian hospitality.

This isn’t a tourism mechanism. It is the besa: an ancient moral principle, inscribed in the Kanun code that governed Albanian society for centuries. Besa means keeping one’s word, but in concrete terms it implies this: welcoming a stranger under your roof is a sacred duty. Refusing hospitality would be a shame. Causing harm would be an unforgivable fault.

Concretely, this translates into gestures that confuse European travelers: a stranger stopping you in a alley to offer you coffee, a mountain family inviting you to lunch when you were just asking for directions, an old man in a bazaar who spends twenty minutes telling you the history of his town, with nothing to sell or promote.

✦ Our Team’s View Always accept. It’s the fundamental rule. Declining a coffee, a raki, or an invitation to sit can be seen as an offense, not out of hostility but out of misunderstanding. Playing the besa game means agreeing to slow down, to sit down for no reason, to listen without urgency. It’s often there that the journey really begins.

Albania Opens Up — but Not Like Its Neighbors

Albanie intérieure : un voyage au cœur de l’Europe oubliée

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Casa Batlló Barcelona: A Journey into Gaudí’s Genius

June 11, 2026 by Amara Nambinga

Like in a dream… Plunged into darkness, about ten people wait in a vast room for something to happen. As their eyes adjust to the dim light, screens lining the space from floor to ceiling become visible. Suddenly, the show begins. Around them, wavy lines resembling strands of DNA coil, converge and then explode into a galaxy of glowing points. Dreamlike shapes fuse, disperse, cross and drift away in a ballet that, at first glance, seems somewhat chaotic. But upon closer inspection, these shapes move together, symbolizing the electrical signals of a brain in frenetic activity: that of architect Antoni Gaudí. Then one feels swept into a luminous tunnel, with screens all around projecting details of stone columns, stained glass – those of the famous Sagrada Família.

Suddenly, a leaf motif becomes a stained glass window

Bienvenue dans The Dreams of Gaudí, une installation immersive créée par un artiste turco-américain de 40 ans, Refik Anadol, au sein de la Casa Batlló (prononcer “balyo”). Cet immeuble d’habitation, rénové entre 1904 et 1906 par Gaudí, est l’une des œuvres phares de l’architecte. Au numéro 43 du Passeig de Gràcia, avenue chic de la bourgeoisie barcelonaise du XXe siècle et vitrine des créations du modernisme catalan, la Casa Batlló se distingue par sa façade aux couleurs arc-en-ciel, tout en relief, avec ses balcons en forme de masques et ses colonnes évoquant un squelette, qui lui ont valu le surnom de Casa dels Ossos, la “maison des os”. Son toit est parcouru de formes ondulantes, recouvertes de tuiles de céramique mauves, bleues et vertes représentant le dos du dragon terrassé, selon la légende, par saint Georges (Sant Jordi, patron de la Catalogne). Mais surtout, l’édifice abrite des expériences immersives utilisant les toutes dernières technologies numériques. L’exploit : faire entrer les visiteurs dans la tête du génial Catalan !

Several rooms vie for ingenuity in highlighting Gaudí’s creative process, in a ballet of organic shapes.

As a child, Gaudí suffered from acute rheumatic pains and spent his days observing nature. A nature that would greatly inspire him later. So the moment you enter sets the tone. The visitor’s tour begins in the basement, in the building’s old coal cellars, inside a dome-shaped room, plunged into darkness. There, a scene lights up, reconstructing a forest – with ambient sounds, exposed roots, a pond, pebbles… – and a luminous stream projected on the floor. The walls and ceiling are covered with a thousand tiny screens displaying details of turtle shells, butterfly wings, flowers…

Gaudí’s Architecture: A Total and Organic Art

Suddenly, a branch becomes a column; a leaf motif transforms into a stained glass window. Entitled The Genius’s Inspiration, this creation by producer and director Miguel Alonso, creative director of Casa Batlló, puts the visitor in Gaudí’s shoes. The images on the screens draw on the architect’s work—hundreds of thousands of contemporary documents, manuscripts, plans, archive photos. The animations of the Dreams of Gaudí are renewed, meanwhile, thanks to artificial intelligence. The result, the show evolves perpetually.

“For us, immersive experiences are not just a trend, explains Gary Gautier, the general manager of Casa Batlló. They help us better understand Gaudí’s distinctive vision, who conceived architecture as a total, organic art connected to nature. If visitors leave here with the sense of having understood not only a building but a way of seeing the world, then we will have achieved our goal.”

This innovative approach earned Casa Batlló the 2022 award for Best International Exhibition, a museum Oscar handed out by the prestigious British society Museums + Heritage.

Dans le grand salon moderniste de la famille Batlló, la passion de Gaudí pour les lignes courbes apparaît dans toute sa beauté sinueuse.

In the grand modernist salon of the Batlló family, Gaudí’s passion for curved lines appears in all its sinuous beauty.

More traditional and no less fascinating is the tour of the other floors, magnificently restored. Most of Gaudí’s original furniture, designed for Casa Batlló, is today housed in various Barcelona cultural institutions, such as the National Art Museum of Catalonia, but tablets allow visitors, thanks to augmented reality, to visualize the rooms adorned with period furniture. And in some rooms, there is no need for this device: the furniture has been meticulously reproduced. This blend of virtual and real succeeds in creating the illusion of a journey through time and the daily life of the Catalan bourgeoisie in the early 20th century.

A Mushroom-Shaped Alcove

On the noble floor, above the ground floor, you enter the imposing office of Josep Batlló i Casanovas, a businessman who made his fortune in textiles and had entrusted Gaudí with the renovation. Next to it, in the apartment’s grand salon, are a globe and a wooden gramophone. The adjoining alcove, mushroom-shaped, is a small, astonishing reception space. Inside, a fireplace, with, on one side of the hearth, a double bench to accommodate the eldest daughter of the Batlló family and the parade of suitors who came courting her and, on the other side, a simple bench to welcome her chaperone!

Access to the upper floors is via a monumental work: an old service staircase reinvented in 2021 by the renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, who dressed it with tens of thousands of aluminum chains, like a second skin. At the top floor, surprise: one enters into attics like no other, where sixty-odd chain-link arches in flawless white support the roof, evoking the rib cage of an animal. This floor, once used as a laundry, was imagined by Gaudí as a living organism: the white walls, coated with antiseptic lime milk, catch the light, while a system of slots and channels vents moisture from the laundry. The air circulates freely, like a natural breath, turning this utilitarian space into a gallery of breath and light, as functional as it is poetic.

We depart with the odd impression of having visited both a decorative arts museum and a futuristic exhibition. An experience in the image of Antoni Gaudí himself, who was at once a man of his time and a visionary creator.

Practical tips

Plan about an hour and a quarter to explore the venue.
Tickets from €29 (free for under 12s).
Book in advance to get the best rates on casabatllo.es/fr

➤ Article published in GEO magazine No. 568, “Barcelone, l’atelier à ciel ouvert d’Antoni Gaudí,” June 2026.

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Georgia Between Europe and Asia: A Seasonal Journey

June 10, 2026 by Amara Nambinga

It’s hardly an accident that the ancient Greeks made this land the setting for the Argonauts and the realm of Medea. Georgia is none other than the stage for one of the earliest European adventure tales: the ancient Colchis, where Jason recovered the Golden Fleece. A unique blend of History and modernity, this small territory of 69,700 square kilometers packs within its stunning geography twelve climatic zones and wild natural spaces, some peaks exceeding 5,000 meters, hundreds of mineral springs, dense forests, and shores washed by the Black Sea. Each season is unique, revealing a different face of the country as light changes: hiking, trekking or ski touring are practiced in a pristine environment. Hospitality here expresses itself through millennia-old rituals; many sites and traditions are listed as UNESCO World Heritage.

Summer: Between Sky and Sea

From the summits of the Caucasus to the beaches along the Adjara coast, the country willingly reveals itself under the summer sun. To the north, the high range of the Greater Caucasus sees hikers wandering through forests of beech and hornbeam, crisscrossed by turbulent torrents and crowned by glaciers. In its villages, a mountain way of life endures—authentic and rugged—paced by folk festivals. In Upper Svaneti, the remarkable village of Ushguli, perched at more than 2,000 meters above sea level, raises its tall medieval defensive towers against the blue of the sky.

Svaneti

Kolkheti

At the other end of the country, just two or three hours by road, lies the Black Sea. Nestled against the Turkish border, the Adjara coast enjoys a subtropical climate: palms provide welcome shade, the air is thick with humidity. Cosmopolitan, distinctive, the seaside city of Batumi blends Art Nouveau architecture and Ottoman influences, glass towers and casinos along a vibrant seafront that buzzes in the summer months. There you will find busy yet pleasant beaches for a refreshing dip. To discover wilder coves, you must head a little further north.

Batumi

Autumn: the Harvest Season

By late September, the sun becomes oblique, the forests turn gold, and the air grows softer. This is the pinnacle of the year, a genuine and gentle transition toward winter. The country pulses to the rhythm of the rtveli, the traditional grape harvest. In villages, grapes are trodden by foot in wooden vats, the satsnakheli, after which the juice is poured into qvevri—ovoide clay vessels—where it begins to ferment. Georgia has been producing wine for more than 8,000 years, and this ancestral method is inscribed on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list.

rtveli are a moment of great conviviality marked by a feast called supra. Dozens of toasts are made according to a well-established ritual orchestrated by the master of ceremonies, the tamada; one dances to traditional music, and typical dishes are tasted: khachapuri (cheese bread), khinkali (dumplings stuffed), pkhali (delightful vegetable-based starters).

rtveli are a moment of great conviviality marked by a feast called supra. We raise dozens of toasts according to a well-established ritual orchestrated by the master of ceremonies, the tamada, we dance to traditional music, and we sample typical dishes: khachapuri (cheese bread), khinkali (stuffed dumplings), pkhali (delightful vegetable-based appetizers).

rtveli are a moment of great conviviality marked by a feast called supra. We raise dozens of toasts according to a well-established ritual orchestrated by the master of ceremonies, the tamada, we dance to traditional music, and we sample typical dishes: khachapuri, (pains au fromage), khinkalis (ravioli), pkhali (savory vegetable starters).

Tbilisi – Bains sulfureux

Tbilisi is especially welcoming in the heart of winter: visitors linger there before resuming the road to ski on the less crowded but often pristine slopes of the Greater Caucasus! Gudauri, Bakuriani, Tetnuldi (Svaneti), Bakhmaro and Goderdzi… you simply need to choose your resort!

Bakuriani

Kolkheti

A destination at the other end of the country is the Black Sea. Nestled near the Turkish border, the Adjara coast enjoys a subtropical climate: palms cast welcome shade, the air is laden with humidity. Cosmopolitan and distinctive, the seaside city of Batumi blends Art Nouveau architecture with Ottoman influences, glass towers and casinos along a lively seafront that comes alive in the summer. Here you’ll find popular, pleasant beaches for cooling off. To discover wilder coves, you should head a bit further north.

Batumi

Winter: From the warmth of Tbilisi to the ski slopes

Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, pleasantly stretches along the banks of the Mtkvari River. One enjoys visiting the Narikala fortress and its labyrinth of cobbled streets, lined with wooden-balconied houses. The medieval Metekhi Church, followed by the famed Abanotubani sulfur baths, also deserve a stop to discover the millennial tradition of thermal cures that characterizes the country.

Tbilisi – Bains sulfureux

Tbilisi is particularly welcoming in the heart of winter: one is happy to stay before resuming the journey to ski on the seldom-busy yet often pristine slopes of the Greater Caucasus! Gudauri, Bakuriani, Tetnuldi (Svaneti), Bakhmaro and Goderdzi… you just have to choose your resort!

Bakuriani

Kolkheti

The Georgia can be visited all year round, but each season offers its own distinctive experiences. All that remains is to choose your preferred season.

More information here.