Lëkurësi Fortress

The castle sits on a hill roughly a kilometre southeast of Sarandë, on ground chosen for what it could see: the whole town below, Butrint, the islands of Ksamil and the Straits of Corfu. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent had it built in 1537 to defend against the Venetians, and it held a garrison of 220 soldiers.

Historians have read the site as older than that date, with the work of 1537 a rebuilding carried out while Suleiman was attacking Corfu, when command of the Skela of Sarandë and of the road running inland to Butrint became a necessity.

The region traditionally belonged to the southern part of Himara. At the end of the 18th century Ali Pasha of Ioannina attacked the castle and raided the habitation around it. A village called Lëkurës stood on the western slope of the hill until the 19th century, and appears to have carried a larger population than Sarandë itself.

Between 28 February and 4 March 1878 the castle and the lands nearby were the ground of an Albanian–Greek conflict. Greek rebels under Georgios Stephanou fought Albanian locals through the villages of Lëkurës, Sarandë, Karalibej and Gjashtë. The fighting ended with the retreating Greeks taking refuge inside the walls and the Albanians laying siege to them; the siege closed in an Albanian victory, and the revolt with it. The villagers of Lëkurës are thought to have left in the same year.

The fort is almost square, with round towers at the north-western and south-eastern corners — diagonally opposed, a figure said in these districts to have been the medieval sign of the leather-workers. The loopholes are found in those towers. The walls stand some 6.7 to 7 metres high and up to 2 metres thick, and the lower floor served as a store. The southern and eastern sides have survived best. The castle is a ruin, with a bar-restaurant and other visitor buildings raised beside it in a matching style.