North to South Albania

Lord George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron was the most important and leading figure in the Romantic Movement, and he is considered the greatest European poet and satirist. Byron’s books are world widely read. Byron left England in 1809 for a grand tour through Spain, Portugal, Italy, to Albania. Ali Pasha of Tepelena ruled the southern part of Albania at the time and Byron was very interested in meeting him while traveling in a land that most West Europeans didn't dare to visit. 

 

'I talk not of mercy, I talk not of fear,

He neither must know who would serve the Vizier:

Since the days of our prophet the Crescent ne’er saw

A chief ever glorious like Ali Pashaw.'

  

So wrote Lord Byron in his famous poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, where he chronicled the journey that he and his dear friend and diarist  J.C. Hobhouse took through the mountainous regions of southern Albania in 1809. Along the  

journey through the villages of the Vjosë Valley.  Byron described himself at the time as ‘the humblest of thy pilgrims passing by, but the resulting poem that the journey inspired remains one of English literature’s most eloquent works. 

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