Shkodra, the regional capital of northern Albania

Shkodra (or Shkodër when in a sentence with a preposition as in "to", "in" or "from Shkodra) is a city located on Lake Shkodra (Liqeni i Shkodrës) in northwestern Albania. It is one of the oldest and most historic towns in Albania, as well as an important cultural and economic centre. It now has a population of around 200,000. Its name may be derived from "Shko-Drin", meaning "where Drin goes" - the river Drin, coming from the east, joins with the Buna river below to the castle of Rozafa, on the outskirts of Shkodra. It may also be that the name derives from Latin or is even older than Roman times. It used also to be known by the name of Scutari in recent times.

Shkodra was founded around the 4th century BC, the site of the Labeates, an Illyrian tribe. In 168 BCE, the city was taken by the Romans and it became an important trade and military route. In the early 7th century the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius gave the city of Shkodra and the surrounding territories to the Serbs, because the original Albanian inhabitants didn't agree to convert from the Catholic to the Orthodox faith! It became a major city of the medieval Serb state, later fell to Bulgarian rule and was ruled by the Byzantines, various principalities and Venetians until it fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1479. Until then it had resisted two major Ottoman attacks, in 1474 and 1478-1479, under the leadership of Leka Dukagjini, (who had become leader of the Albanian resistance following the death of Skanderbeg, Albania's national hero, in 1468), when the city was entirely surrounded by Ottoman forces. Leka Dukagjini, by the way, was the unifier and legislator of the Albanian highland law, the Kanun, used mostly in northern Albania and Kosovo from the 15th century until the 20th century and revived recently after the fall of the communist regime in the early 1990s. The rules evolved over time as a way to bring laws and rule to these lands, although the most infamous laws of Kanuni are those regulating blood feuds.

Although the city was devastated after the Turkish occupation, it became again prosperous in the 17th century and was an important trade centre in the second half of the 19th century for the entire Balkan peninsula; it also became a cultural centre. There were also uprisings against the Turks and Shkodra played an important role during the League of Prizren, the Albanian liberation movement. After the final defeat of the Turks by Montenegro, the Montenegrin army entered the city, but had to hand it over to the newly independent Albania in May 1913, after they had slaughtered 6000 Albanians. During the First World War it was again occupied by Montenegro and later by Austria Hungary. It has had a turbulent history in the 20th century; during the early 1990s, Shkodra was a major centre of the democratic movement that finally brought to an end the communist regime established by Enver Hoxha.

Downtown Shkodra has interesting things to see; on Rruga Skenderbeg is a fierce statue of Isa Boletin (1864-1916), a nationalist who spent four years imprisoned in İstanbul and then went to fight in the liberation movement against the Turks, and later against Serbia and Montenegro in order to include Kosovo inside the borders of the new state of Albania. The Great Powers decided otherwise, and Boletini was eventually killed in Montenegro during an attempt to capture Podgorica. A more gentle statue is that of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, while nearby is the socialist-realist statue of the "5 Heroes, who died heroically, fighting bravely to the death without thinking of surrender, for the cause of the Communist Party forces on 21 June 1944". There are recently restored churches, like the Catholic Cathedral, used as a basketball and volleyball court in Communist times and the new Christian Orthodox church. Placed on the site of an earlier war-damaged predecessor and surrounded by gardens, the huge Abu Beker Mosque, built in 1995 by the Saudi sheik Zamil Abdullah Al Zamil, forms the focal point of Shkodra's proud Muslim community. And the town is a pleasant place to wander with shopping streets, restaurants and cafés.

	Southern approach, Shkodra	Apartment blocks	Isa Boletini statue	Catholic Cathedral
	Interior cathedral	Old houses, Shkodra	Shopping street	Mother Teresa statue
	Christian Orthodox church	Ebu Beker Mosque	Five Heroes statue	Traditional music

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