particularly important) and wood. Both Albania and Montenegro still have impressive Roman remains, including UNESCO-listed Butrint in Albania.
The Illyrians didn’t simply vanish – several Roman emperors including Aurelius and Diocletian were actually of Illyrian descent, and a number of Illyrian tribes also left their names in the region, including the words Dalmatia (from the Delmatae tribe) and Adriatic (from the Ardiaei).
Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fourth century AD, and a succession of Hunnish and Gothic invasions, Slavic tribes settled in the Balkans from the sixth century AD. Byzantium remained a dominant influence in the Balkans, albeit waxing and waning with the rise and fall of other powers in the region such as the Bulgars.
The medieval period
During the 11th century the Serbian state of Duklja (in what is now Montenegro) gained independence from Byzantium, while the following century in Albania, Arbanon was established as a semi-autonomous principality. Duklja was in turn absorbed into Raška, which grew into medieval Serbia, and by the 14th century Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo were all incorporated into the vast medieval Serbian Empire. The seat of the Serbian Patriarchate (Orthodox Church) was located in Peć (Pejë), in Kosovo, and the medieval architecture of Peć and Deçan – just east of the Peaks of the Balkans Trail, and a very worthy detour – is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
With the defeat of Serbian and other Christian armies by the Ottomans at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro all fell under Ottoman rule for some 500 years. In Albania in particular, the following centuries saw a widespread conversion to Islam. Meanwhile Venice annexed most of the southern Adriatic coast, including the Albanian and Montenegrin coasts – a hold it would maintain until Napoleon Bonaparte extinguished the Venetian Republic in 1797.
Wooden minaret in snowfall, Plav (Stage 8)
Early 20th century
Serbia and Montenegro, together with Greece and Bulgaria, successfully attacked and defeated the Ottomans during the First Balkan War in 1912, leading to the Ottomans ceding most of their territories in the Balkans. Serbia regained Kosovo, Albania declared its independence. However at the end of the First World War, Montenegro became the only Allied country to lose its independence, becoming instead a part of Serbia when the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed in 1918.
During the Second World War the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded by Hitler’s Germany, Albania by Mussolini and later Germany. In 1945, Montenegro – along with Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia and Macedonia (Kosovo had the status of an autonomous province within Serbia) – became a state within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, under Tito. Meanwhile in Albania, the head of the new Communist Party Enver Hoxha became ruler. Tito formally broke ranks with Stalinism in 1948, while Hoxha followed a more isolationist policy, and later turned increasingly towards Communist China.
Recent conflicts
Following the death of Tito in 1980, Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević rose to power in Yugoslavia, fanning nationalist sentiment and reducing the autonomous status of Kosovo within Yugoslavia. Croatia declared its independence from Serbia following a referendum in 1991, and during the ensuing war between Serbia and Croatia (Croatian War of Independence), Montenegro allied itself with Serbia. Following this conflict, Serbia and Montenegro maintained the name Yugoslavia, but from 2002 this confederation was renamed the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. Calls by the Albanian majority in Kosovo for greater autonomy within Yugoslavia led to the Kosovo War in the late 1990s, between Yugoslav forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, prompting a huge exodus of refugees into Albania, and Nato airstrikes on Serbia.
Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, the declaration being recognised by most EU states as well as by Montenegro – which has distanced itself from Serbia’s stance on Kosovo – but not by Serbia, which still views this area as the cradle of medieval Serbia. A large stretch of the border between Montenegro and Kosovo remains disputed, and a drive from Berane in Montenegro to Peć in Kosovo goes through around 7km of remote and spectacularly beautiful no-man’s-land.
In 1990, the Communist regime in Albania allowed the formation of independent political parties for the first time. However the country descended into anarchy in the late 1990s following the collapse of fraudulent pyramid investment schemes, through which many Albanians saw their life’s savings vanish.
The church in Theth, Albania, built in 1892 (Stage 10)
21st century
In May 2006 Montenegro held a referendum and voted by a narrow margin for independence from Serbia. Although the EU began accession talks with Montenegro in 2012, at the time of writing (2017) any potential prospect of EU membership remains several years away. Both Montenegro and Albania are members of Nato.
National parks and nature reserves
Prokletije National Park, in Montenegro, covers an area of 16,630ha. It is the newest of Montenegro’s five national parks, having been designated as such in 2009 – a strikingly beautiful mountain landscape, the fauna and in particular the flora of which are fantastically rich. Within Prokletije National Park, the area around Hridsko jezero is a nature reserve (Rezervat prirodne Hridsko jezero), as is Volušnica in the Grbaja Valley.
The Peaks of the Balkans Trail passes through two national parks in Albania: Thethi National Park and Valbona Valley National Park. Thethi National Park covers an area of 2630ha in the Thethi Valley, and was declared a national park in 1966. The Valbona Valley National Park covers an area of 8000ha, and was declared a national park in 1996.
The Rugova Valley and surrounding mountains in Kosovo were declared a national park in 2013, covering an area of 20,330ha. There is some opposition to the new park from some locals, who fear it will affect their ability to collect firewood and graze livestock in the area, or to build houses there.
Despite the presence of these national parks, the area is not without its own environmental issues. In the Valbona Valley, there are proposals for a large number of hydroelectric power plants, some of them within the protected area of the national park itself. Pollution of mountain rivers from toilets – in some cases built directly above streams, as at Dobërdol – is another concern, in particular given the sharp (and continuing) increase of trekkers on the Peaks of the Balkans Trail.
View on the approach to the Valbona Pass (Stage 1)
VALBONA RIVER HYDROELECTRIC POWER PLANTS
There are plans to construct no fewer than 14 hydroelectric power plants along a 30km stretch of the Valbona River, with eight of these to be within the Valbona National Park itself. Despite local residents having filed numerous official complaints, and concerns having been raised by national and international organisations including EuroNatur and the WWF, there has been little or no response to these objections from the Albanian government: they simply argue that the concessions for the projects were made by the previous government, and imply they are unable or unwilling to stop them going ahead – even though they admit they should never have been granted.
Catherine Bohne and Alfred Selimaje, who run the Rilindja Guesthouse in Valbona, are doing what they can to raise awareness of these proposals, which would obviously have a catastrophic impact on the environment and surrounding landscape – which is simultaneously the region’s main
