Albania
Albania (officially Republic of Albania) is a country in Southeast Europe, with its capital at Tirana, and is home to roughly 2.4M people.
Albanian is the official language; the currency in circulation is Albanian lek (L); people from here are called Albanian.
- »Roughly 170,000 concrete bunkers were built across the country under Enver Hoxha, about one for every four citizens at the time.
Albania touches four neighbours: Greece to the southeast, Kosovo to the northeast, Montenegro to the north and North Macedonia to the east. Directions run from one centre to the other.
Tirana was a minor Ottoman town until it was made capital in 1920. Its communist-era blocks were later painted in bright colours on the initiative of a mayor who argued that colour would change how people treated the city.
28,265 km² (10,913 sq mi), 141st largest of 198 countries and territories on file, almost exactly the size of Burundi.
Population 2,377,128, 144th of 198 on file. That averages 84 per km² (218 per sq mi).
The black double-headed eagle is the seal of Skanderbeg, the 15th-century lord who held off the Ottomans for 25 years. Albanians call their country Shqipëri, often glossed as 'land of the eagles'.