Built into the hillsides, with a fortress overlooking the bazaar and narrow cobblestone streets that wind through the stone roofed houses below, Gjirokastër is a steep town. The writer Ismail Kadare called it “maybe the steepest in the world.” Within my first five minutes in Gjirokastër, my rental car and I faced maybe the steepest street in the town and it did not go well.
Gjirokastër, or “Silver Castle,” may have been named for the massive stone fortress that was built in the middle ages when the town was part of the Greek kingdom of Epirus. Medieval stone architecture mixed with eastern influences from the town’s five hundred years of Ottoman rule gives Gjirokastër a distinct stone feel to it that casually blends together with the rocky hillsides that rise up from the center.
We arrived in town in a Renault Clio station wagon so overloaded that I couldn’t see anything from my rear view mirror except tightly packed suitcases. It feels kind of unnecessary to travel this way when I remember I once had nothing but a backpack with a book and a change of clothes, but our life is in suitcases now: school books, winter clothes, snorkel gear and so on.
The kids sat in the backseat, divided by another stack of suitcases. ND relayed directions to me from Google Maps on his phone. We exited a roundabout onto a street that quickly curved up a hill towards the old town and ND suddenly shouted out, “turn left here!”
The lane rose steeply between stone walls shaded by bougainvillea. “Are you sure there isn’t another way?” I slowed to a stop. The lane appeared to grow narrower and steeper up ahead.
“Nope, this is the only way,” ND insisted.
I reserved our room in Gjirokastër based on its proximity to the old town and parking. I did not want to struggle with finding parking or suffer through street parking, but I didn’t consider that the guesthouse parking would be at the top of a steep narrow lane.
I dropped the car into first gear and then gunned the tiny engine and we began to bounce over the cobblestones as the car raced up the lane. The walls closed in on us, nearing the side mirrors as the lane narrowed. The bouncing became squealing as we slowed and the tires struggled to maintain a grip on the shiny cobblestone.
I pushed on the gas pedal until I was coming out of my seat, but there was nothing left. The engine died and we began skidding backwards down the narrow lane.
With nothing but suitcases visible behind me, I had to stretch my head out the window to direct the car in reverse all the way back down.
This time we left the car and hiked up to the guesthouse. The lane became even more impossibly steep and narrow than where our car had died, with a tight ninety degree turn at the top that descended to the guesthouse. And sure enough there was another road coming up from the other side, one that was neither narrow, steep nor cobbled.
Gjirokastër is referred to as the City of Stone and the reason for this is very clear when the town is seen from above. Our guesthouse, like its neighbors above and below, was roofed in heavy slabs of weathered mossy stone.
The house itself had three doors. One opened to our room, another opened to the main house where our host family lived: mother, father, young child and grandparents. When I mentioned to our host that I was due back at the dentist in Durrës, he brought me to the third door and swung it open where, hidden within the stone walls, a dentist chair awaited.
“I’m a dentist,” he said with a big smile. Fortunately, I had a couple more days before I would have to face the chair.
Later we walked up and down the steep and narrow lanes that wind through the City of Stone. I watched as cars and trucks had to back up and try again around some especially sharp and narrow turns. None of the streets though, I believe, were as steep or narrow as the lane we first explored.
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