Changelog

You can now sign up for an email if the town runs through an unusually wet 5-day stretch — the kind of spell the heritage director has warned loads old stone roofs. It's a comparison against the last 30 years for those same dates, not a structural inspection; the page's own roof-load caution stays the authority on what to actually check.

A new board for qifqi, oshaf and Drino-valley produce — the food the town actually eats, not what's sold on the tourist strip. Sign in to add your own pick; anyone can read them.

The storm-closure warnings on the rain outlook and getting-here pages cited a November 2025 storm as their example of what heavy weather does to Gjirokastër's access roads. A more recent and more serious event had happened since: in January 2026, flooding from the Fiço stream reached the historic centre itself and closed both the Gjirokastër–Kakavijë and Gjirokastër–Valarë roads, with several families evacuated. Both pages now cite it.

Two honest walking routes through the old town: the classic climb from the Old Bazaar past the Bazaar Mosque and Zekate House up to the castle, and a gentler loop through Palorto's stone houses — Ismail Kadare's childhood home, the Skenduli House, and the Ethnographic Museum. Real timing, real gradient, and which doors keep informal hours, aimed at older residents and visitors alike on streets with no step-free alternative.

Answers to the questions that come up most in Gjirokastër's old stone town: parking near the bazaar, renovating a house in the protected zone, the regional hospital, winter road closures, Greek-language schooling, and bus connections — plus an honest note on the one thing this site couldn't find a published answer to.

Residents told us the same thing in the research: there is no single place to look something up. Notices are spread across the municipality site, Facebook groups and national news. This is the first small piece of an answer — the numbers you need when something is wrong. Everything on the page came from the service's own official website, read on 1 August 2026, and every card links back to the page it came from: 112 and the ambulance number 127, the local police operations room, the border police at Kakavijë, Ujësjellës Kanalizime Gjirokastër, the OSHEE call centre and the Gjirokastër counter, the regional hospital, the municipality's contact for information and complaints, and the Regional Directorate of Cultural Heritage — the office to call before touching a house in the protected zone. Some numbers are missing, and the page says so rather than guessing. Spitali Rajonal Gjirokastër publishes no switchboard number. The municipality publishes no general line — only its designated contact for information requests. The bus station publishes nothing at all. A wrong number on a page like this is worse than a gap, so we left the gaps. If the water is off, the Water Status page is still the faster way to see whether it is your building or the neighbourhood. This page is for reaching the utility itself.

What the ground has actually been doing near town over the last month, read live from the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre's catalogue, with the fault story behind it and the official channels — IGEO, AKMC and 112. It is a record of what happened, not a warning: nobody can predict earthquakes.

Water in Gjirokastër is much better than it was — a 2023 German–Swiss rebuild replaced the old rusted mains, and the regulator now records about 22 hours of supply a day — but short cuts still happen, especially up the hill. This board is for the honest question when your tap runs dry: is it just my building, or the whole neighbourhood? Signed-in residents tap their quarter to report a cut; reports fade on their own after a few hours, and it takes several independent neighbours before an area reads as sector-wide. The official utility line stays the authoritative channel for planned works.

Owning a house in Gjirokastër's protected old town means ordinary repairs — a new roof, a repainted facade, a replaced window — are permit questions decided by the national heritage bodies, not the builder or the municipality. The heritage director has warned that collapsing stone roofs are a danger to the families living under them. This tool lets you pick the job you have in mind and see whether it generally needs full restoration approval (IMK → KKR), a lighter heritage sign-off, or none — with where to confirm for your own building and where owner support exists. It orients you; it does not decide your case.