Pazari i Ri

Pazari i Ri sits a few minutes northeast of Skanderbeg Square and is the best single reason to walk away from the boulevard. The market itself was rebuilt and r…Pazari i Ri sits a few minutes northeast of Skanderbeg Square and is the best single reason to walk away from the boulevard. The market itself was rebuilt and reopened in 2017: an open hall and the streets around it, selling fruit, vegetables, mountain honey, cheese, olives, dried herbs and raki, with producers often selling their own goods.

What has grown up around the market is the reason it matters to visitors. The surrounding streets carry the highest concentration of traditional Albanian kitchens in the city, along with grill counters turning out qofte over charcoal, byrektore selling pastry by weight from before dawn, and fish restaurants supplied directly from the market stalls. The buildings were repainted and the lanes pedestrianised as part of the same rebuild, so it is a pleasant place to sit rather than simply a functional market.

This is where the city's food tours run, and where you can taste and buy the things worth taking home. It is busiest in the morning, when the produce is freshest and the byrek trays are full, and it shifts into an eating and drinking quarter in the evening. Prices for the same goods are meaningfully lower here than in the souvenir shops around the square.