When the Stones Began to Speak Again
How forgotten tower houses in northern Albania are becoming gateways to rural tourism, local entrepreneurship and a new future for communities.
Author: Jona Plumbi
The first thing visitors notice is the silence.
Not the silence of abandonment, but rather the kind that only mountains know. It settles over the hills surrounding Bulqiza, interrupted only by birdsong, the distant clang of sheep bells and footsteps approaching a centuries-old stone tower.
When the heavy wooden door swings open, the silence gives way to a familiar Albanian ritual: coffee is poured, stories begin, and strangers are welcomed like old friends.
For centuries, this was exactly what a “kulla” was built for.
Built mainly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, each of these stone towers of northern Albania carry memories that cannot be measured in stone. They were homes, places of protection in times of conflict and spaces where family traditions, local craftsmanship, customs and stories passed from one generation to the next.
But for many years, those heavy doors were closed shut, surrounded only by cold stone walls, leaking roofs and echoing memories of what they once represented.
Kulla Hupi in Bulqiza was one of them, until the promise of a grandson to keep his grandfather’s legacy alive and a wider effort supported by GIZ Albania would turn it into an example of what heritage mixed with opportunity can do—not only for one family, but for a community, a town and a whole region.
From isolated towers to a living network
After working in Bulqiza’s chrome mines and years spent abroad in search of new opportunities, Lulzim Hupi returned home determined to restore his family’s kulla. He restored the stone walls, preserved its traditional character and introduced the comforts needed to welcome visitors. But restoring the kulla was only the beginning. The harder question was how to keep its doors open.
This was the challenge GIZ Albania set out to address.
Beginning in 2023, the Tower Tour initiative looked at towers not as isolated monuments, but as part of something much bigger: a wider rural tourism experience. It connected historic kullas with guesthouses, agritourism farms, local guides and businesses, creating a rural tourism network where heritage could generate new opportunities for the communities around it. Across Tropoja, Has, Kukës, Mat, Klos, Bulqiza and Dibra, eleven towers, six guesthouses and two agritourism farms were linked through hiking routes. The aim was not simply to attract tourists to individual buildings but rather to create an ecosystem around them, making the journey as important as the destination.
Just like that, a tower is no longer the journey’s end. It becomes a starting point for a wider experience. A visitor might begin the day inside a centuries-old tower, join a local guide, continue along a mountain trail, stop at a family-run guesthouse, meet an artisan, taste local food and hear stories that would never appear on a standard tourist map.
For the people living there, the network created another kind of journey.
Tower owners received mentoring, hospitality equipment and promotional support, while guides, artisans, young people and local businesses became part of the network. More than 160 people became part of this growing community. Six national tour operators integrated tower itineraries into their offers, while familiarisation tours and national and international promotion helped bring new visitors to places such as Bulqiza.
The idea was simple: one person’s heritage could become another person’s opportunity—and together, a community’s future.
The hidden barrier beneath the stones
As the project expanded, the teams documenting the towers quickly realized that many towers did not have ownership certificates.
Without formal property documentation, owners could neither invest confidently nor apply for restoration funding. Towers with enormous cultural value and families striving to pass their homes safely to their children remained trapped in legal uncertainty.
Addressing this challenge required cooperation beyond tourism. Together with the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sports and the State Cadastre Agency, GIZ helped create a pathway towards formalising ownership and unlocking future investment. In total, 697 applications for ownership certificates have been submitted. Of these, 180 cases have received a decision or an ownership certificate, while 50 towers had already received certification before this process. Another 73 cases are currently completing their documentation, keeping the process moving towards further beneficiaries.
For the families whose ownership has now been formalised, an uncertainty that lasted for generations is finally coming to an end. Sometimes the most important restoration happens not with stone and timber, but with paperwork.
As for the initiative, it revealed that the future of Albania’s towers might not lie in saving a handful of exceptional buildings, but in creating a model that could be taken much further.
When an idea becomes national policy
The Tower Tour is no longer just a project. It has become a national commitment to giving Albania’s towers a future. What began with GIZ Albania’s support has now become into the Programme for the Revitalization of Towers in Northern Albania (2025–2028), an initiative adopted by The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sports, backed by EUR 700,000 in government funding for restoration and operational improvements and designed to connect more towers to tourism products, tour operators and European cultural heritage networks.
More than 500 tower owners have already applied to become part of it. The number tells an important story: families are not simply asking for their heritage to be preserved as a relic. They want to use it. To live with it. To build something from it. Back in Bulqiza, Lulzim Hupi continues to welcome visitors to his kulla—a place where stone, memory and opportunity now meet. And as visitors cross the threshold of Kulla Hupi, they discover that the stones were never silent after all.
They were simply waiting for someone to open the door.
This initiative was implemented by the Sustainable Rural Development project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Swiss Development Cooperation and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.