BalkansSarajevo, Mostar, Ohrid, Skopje, Albanian Riviera

Why Visit the Balkans, in South East Europe?

The Balkans are Europe's most underrated travel region — a patchwork of cultures, landscapes, and histories that most tourists fly straight over on their way somewhere else. From the UNESCO-listed Ottoman streets of Berat in Albania to the Byzantine churches of Ohrid in North Macedonia, the medieval walls of Dubrovnik in Croatia to the rose valleys of Bulgaria, this is a corner of Europe that rewards curiosity with extraordinary visual material and almost no crowds. The Balkans are what Western Europe looked like before mass tourism arrived.

Berat, Albania is the single most photogenic town I found in the Balkans — a UNESCO World Heritage city of a thousand windows, where Ottoman houses stack up the hillside in perfect symmetry. Shoot from the castle at golden hour and you'll have one of those images that stops people scrolling.

Kotor Bay, Montenegro offers dramatic mountain-meets-sea scenery that few people associate with the Balkans. The old town walls rising above the bay make for a classic wide-angle shot, and the kayaking perspective from water level is something else entirely.

Ohrid, North Macedonia — the old church of St John at Kaneo sitting on a promontory above the lake is one of the most-photographed spots in the region, and deservedly so. Come in the early morning mist for the best light.

Sofia and Plovdiv, Bulgaria — Plovdiv's old town is a hidden gem of colourful National Revival architecture, and Sofia's Alexander Nevsky Cathedral provides one of the most striking Orthodox subjects in Eastern Europe.

Belgrade, Serbia — Europe's most underrated capital, and one of its most energetic. The confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers gives the city a dramatic geographical setting; the Belgrade Fortress (Kalemegdan) occupying the headland between the two rivers offers one of the great urban viewpoints in southeastern Europe. Belgrade's character is shaped by its history as the capital of Yugoslavia — the largest, most complex, and most cosmopolitan of the post-war communist states — and by its experience of NATO bombing in 1999, which left scars still visible on certain government buildings. The Skadarlija neighbourhood (the bohemian quarter) is the liveliest restaurant street in the city, dense with live traditional music. Belgrade has the finest nightlife in the Balkans — the floating nightclubs (splavovi) moored on the rivers are a Belgrade institution. The House of Flowers (Dom Cvetova) — Josip Broz Tito's mausoleum, with his tomb surrounded by gifts from world leaders — is the most fascinating monument to 20th-century non-aligned politics in Europe.

Kosovo — Europe's newest country (declared independence in 2008, recognised by over 100 states but not by Serbia or Russia, creating a complex entry/exit situation — see practical tips). Kosovo is small, entirely landlocked, and largely unknown to Western tourists, which makes it one of the most rewarding discoveries in the Balkans. The capital, Pristina, has a raw, energetic quality — new construction next to Ottoman mosques and communist-era monuments, a population that is remarkably young (Kosovo has the youngest demographic in Europe, median age around 29) and enthusiastically outward-looking. Prizren — the old city in southern Kosovo, with Ottoman bridges, a bazaar, and a fortress above the town — is one of the most beautiful small cities in the western Balkans. The Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate of Peć, surrounded by medieval frescoes of extraordinary quality in a green valley, is UNESCO-listed and spiritually significant well beyond Kosovo's borders.

Lake Ohrid & North Macedonia — Ohrid is one of the great undiscovered lakes of Europe: one of the oldest lakes in the world (estimated 4–5 million years old, with endemic species found nowhere else), 30km long, at an altitude of 693m in the mountains of North Macedonia, surrounded by Byzantine churches and UNESCO-listed medieval architecture. The church of St John at Kaneo on its rocky promontory above the lake at sunset is one of the most-photographed scenes in the Balkans, and deservedly so. The old city of Ohrid (also UNESCO-listed) has more churches per square metre than any other city in the world — 365, one for each day of the year, though most are now ruins. The Matka Canyon, near Skopje, offers spectacular hiking, boat trips through narrow gorges, and cave diving in a spectacular karst landscape.

Bulgaria — often grouped with the Balkans but frequently overlooked on the classic circuit. The rose valley (Kazanlak) in spring, when the Rosa damascena fields are harvested for attar (Bulgaria produces 70–80% of the world's rose oil), is one of the most extraordinary seasonal experiences in Europe. Sofia's compact historic centre layers Thracian, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman archaeology almost visibly. The Rila Monastery — a UNESCO-listed Bulgarian Orthodox complex in a mountain valley, with extraordinary frescoes covering every external surface — is the most significant religious monument in Bulgaria and one of the most beautiful in the Balkans.

The Balkans are Europe's most historically complex region, and visiting without some contextual knowledge is to miss the deepest layer of what makes them compelling. The word "Balkans" derives from the Turkish for "mountain," which reflects both the geography and the Ottoman legacy that shaped the region for 500 years. Almost every country here carries the marks of at least four empires — Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian — and the collision of Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, and Islam that resulted from this history remains visible in the streetscape of every major city.

The Ottoman legacy — the Ottoman Empire controlled most of the Balkans for between 400 and 500 years (roughly 1350–1878 for the western and northern areas, longer in the south). The Ottoman period left mosques, bazaars, coffee-house culture, culinary traditions (cevapi, burek, baklava), and a religious map of extraordinary complexity: Muslim majorities in Bosnia and Kosovo, mixed Muslim-Orthodox-Catholic communities throughout, and the legacy of the devshirme system (through which talented Christian boys were taken into Ottoman service and could rise to the highest offices of the empire). The resentment of Ottoman rule and the struggle for independence in the 19th century created the political instability that led directly to World War One — the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, the trigger for the war that killed 20 million people, is inseparable from this history.

Yugoslavia and its dissolution — the former Yugoslavia (founded 1918, reconstituted after WWII under Josip Broz Tito) was the largest and most complex attempt to unite the South Slavic peoples in a single state. Tito's Yugoslavia was genuinely different from the Soviet-aligned communist states — non-aligned, relatively open to Western visitors, with a consumer culture and a degree of personal freedom that was unusual in communist Europe. After Tito's death in 1980, the Yugoslav federation began to fracture along ethnic and religious lines. The dissolution (1991–1992) and the wars that followed — in Slovenia (10 days), Croatia (1991–1995), Bosnia (1992–1995, the most devastating, with the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 — the worst act of genocide in Europe since the Holocaust — and the 1,000-day siege of Sarajevo), and Kosovo (1998–1999) — left scars on the landscape and in the population that remain raw. Understanding this context makes every bullet-hole scar, every rebuilt bridge, and every museum that much more significant.

Visiting the memorials — the Tuol Sleng-equivalent of the Balkans — requires care and respect. The Tunnel Museum in Sarajevo, the Srebrenica Memorial and Cemetery, the war-damaged buildings deliberately preserved in Mostar and Sarajevo, and the Kosovo War memorials are genuinely important places to visit, and local guides who are survivors or children of survivors can provide a depth of personal testimony that no guidebook can.

Balkan food is one of Europe's most consistently underrated culinary traditions — hearty, flavourful, shaped by Ottoman technique and local ingredients, and almost universally cheap. It shares deep roots across all the countries of the region, with local variations that make exploring the differences rewarding.

Ćevapi — the defining food of the western Balkans: small, hand-shaped grilled meat sausages of minced beef and lamb (or pork, outside Muslim-majority areas), served in a warm flatbread (somun or lepinja) with raw onion, ajvar (roasted red pepper relish), and kajmak (a slightly soured cream cheese). In Sarajevo, a proper plate of ćevapi at a buregdžinica costs around €3 and is one of the finest things to eat in southeastern Europe. Every city in the region has its own version and its passionate partisans.

Burek — flaky filo pastry filled with minced meat (burek), cheese (sirnica), spinach (zeljanica), or potato, baked in a spiral coil and sold by weight at bakeries from morning. A burek breakfast — torn up with yogurt poured over it — is the morning meal of half the western Balkans, and the correct response to a hangover anywhere from Sarajevo to Skopje.

Rakia (Rakija) — the spirit of the Balkans, distilled from fruit (most commonly plum — šljivovica — but also grape, apple, quince, pear, and walnut). Every family in Serbia, Bosnia, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria makes their own; every restaurant has a house version; and offering or receiving a glass of rakia is a social gesture of hospitality that crosses every cultural and religious division in the region. The quality of homemade rakija varies from extraordinary to extraordinary-in-a-different-way. Accept every glass.

Ajvar — roasted red pepper relish, made in industrial quantities by Balkan families in September when the peppers are at their best, and eaten throughout the year. The smell of roasting peppers in September in any Balkan city is one of the great seasonal signatures of the region. Commercial versions exist but are inferior to the homemade product by a significant margin.

Bosnian coffee — the coffee culture of Bosnia, inherited from the Ottomans, is a social institution as much as a beverage. Bosnian coffee (bosanska kafa) is prepared by boiling finely ground coffee in a small džezva, poured slowly into a finjan (small cup) alongside a sugar cube and a piece of lokum (Turkish delight) or a ratluk sweet. The ritual of drinking it — slowly, in conversation, without hurry — is the most visible expression of Bosnian culture's Ottoman inheritance.

Regional variations worth seeking — Croatia's Istrian and Dalmatian coasts have an Italian-influenced cuisine (fresh seafood, olive oil, peka — meat and vegetables slow-cooked under a bell-shaped lid buried in embers — is the Dalmatian equivalent of a lovo feast); Serbia's interior offers hearty meat dishes, white Feta-style cheese, and the powerful spirit tradition; North Macedonia's Lake Ohrid trout (pastrmka) is one of the finest freshwater fish in Europe; Albanian cuisine features excellent lamb prepared with yogurt and wild herbs, and byrek (the Albanian version of burek) stuffed with gjizë (a fresh cheese unique to Albania).