Balkan tours along ancient roads and through Ottoman towns
Esplora’s Balkan tours grew out of the same instinct that shaped our Turkey and Caucasus programmes: a preference for the region’s quieter corners over its headline destinations. Albania in particular remains one of the least visited countries in Europe relative to its history, its Greek and Roman ruins, Ottoman towns and mountain landscapes largely overlooked by mainstream travel, decades of isolation under communist rule having left much of it untouched by mass tourism. Our guides treat that as an opportunity rather than an obstacle, building itineraries around real depth of knowledge rather than a checklist of sights, and drawing on the same Byzantine and Roman expertise that runs through our Turkey and Caucasus programmes, since the Balkans were never really a separate story from either. Groups are capped at twelve, small enough to move easily through Ottoman old towns and to make the most of local guides and historians along the way. As with every Esplora destination, we run tours to the Balkans because the region itself gives us a genuine sense of wonder, from Berat’s tiered Ottoman houses to the crumbling grandeur of Butrint, not because it happens to be commercially convenient.
Albania to Byzantium: Our small group Balkan tours
Our Albania tour spends ten days through the country’s highlights: the Roman and Byzantine ruins of Butrint, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the ancient Greek colony of Apollonia, the Ottoman hill town of Berat with its stacked white houses climbing the hillside, and the fortress town of Gjirokastra, birthplace of the writer Ismail Kadare. For guests who want to trace a genuinely ambitious historical route, The Via Egnatia follows the old Roman road from Albania all the way to Constantinople over 15 days, led by a historian guide through Ohrid on its ancient lake, Thessaloniki, the Roman forum at Philippi and finally Istanbul itself. It is one of the more unusual itineraries we run, built for guests who want to understand how the Balkans and Byzantium actually connect, tracing a single road across four modern countries rather than visiting each in isolation. Both tours are run in small groups of no more than twelve, with the same depth of guiding and the same insistence on real historical context that runs through every Esplora itinerary, whichever destination it happens to cover.
Tailor your own Balkan tour
If our scheduled Balkan tours do not fit your dates, or you would like to travel with your own group, get in touch and we can discuss a bespoke itinerary. We are often able to add extra departures, or build an escorted tour of Albania or the wider Balkans around the specific history or landscape that interests you. Every Esplora Balkan tour stays capped at twelve guests, led by a guide with genuine depth of local and historical knowledge, so the pace stays thoughtful and the region’s Ottoman, Roman and Byzantine layers get the attention they deserve.
