Anger in Albanian Mountain Village After Holiday Cabins Demolished

In the Theth valley of northern Albania, flanked by soaring peaks, tourists take pictures of a village church built in the late 19th century, a beautiful stone structure that regularly features in pamphlets luring tourists to the region.

A stone’s throw away, piles of wood and concrete plinths are all that remain of dozens of wooden cabins built to accommodate those tourists, only to be demolished by the state in July.

“They destroyed our lives, not just our buildings,” said 63-year-old Kol Gjergj Legata, who fled communist Albania in 1990 for Yugoslavia and then Greece, returning only five years ago and investing what he said was a sum of 30,000 euros in a cabin he began building in January.