For forty-one years it was the only nation in Europe to declare itself atheist by law.
One fifth of its people now live abroad.
This is Living in Albania. On a hillside above the village of Leskovik, a shepherd ducks into a concrete bunker the size of a refrigerator and hangs his canvas bag from a hook that was drilled into the wall in 1979. The country has one hundred and seventy-three thousand of them, built between 1967 and 1986.
On the Adriatic coast at Vlorë, a plaque above the harbour names a date: the seventh of March, 1991, when twenty-five thousand Albanians left this port in six days for the Italian shore. A few streets back from the water, the apartment blocks the regime poured in grey have been repainted, one building at a time, in cobalt and ochre.
