Travel Guide Peshkopi

Peshkopi/Peshkopia has a population of around 8,000 (15,000 including the rest of the municipality). It is the capital of the Dibra/Dibër district (110,000 inhabitants). The town lies 25 km northwest of Debar (North Macedonia) and 73 km south of Kukës. It can be reached by minibus from Kukës, Tirana and Prizren (Kosovo).At an altitude of 650 m, Peshkopi is popular with hikers and mountain bikers. Although its spa facilities are outdated, it boasts superb scenery, with the Black Drin valley to the west, the Deshat massif (2,372 m) to the south and Mount Korab (2,764 m) to the north, the highest point in Albania and northern Macedonia. A Bulgarian bishopric in the 11th century(peshkop means "bishop" in Albanian), Peshkopi was later an Ottoman garrison town. Its history merges with the Dibra region shared with North Macedonia. But links with Debar (mainly populated by Albanians) are difficult due to the poor state of the road. The town center occupies the western bank of the Përroi i Llixhave ("stream of the thermal baths"), a tributary of the Black Drin. To the northeast are the Old Mosque, the Old Market (Pazari) and the New Mosque with its double minaret. The latter is the starting point for two major thoroughfares with hotels, restaurants and minibuses: boulevard Elez-Isufi (a nationalist fighter who died in 1924) and rue Tercilio-Kardinali (Tersilio Cardinali, an Italian officer who joined the Albanian partisans in 1943) running around the town center.