ALBANIA COUNTRY GUIDE — REFERENCES AND MAP NOTES Reviewed 19 October 2026. Public route: /atlas/albania Population INSTAT, Albania Population and Housing Census 2023, main results: https://www.instat.gov.al/media/13615/cens-i-popullsise-2023.pdf https://www.instat.gov.al/en/themes/censuses/census-of-population-and-housing/publications/2023/main-results-of-the-population-and-housing-census-2023/ The 2,402,113 figure counts residents at the September 2023 census, not the worldwide Albanian diaspora or a current population estimate. Geography, history, language, society and economy https://www.britannica.com/place/Albania https://www.britannica.com/place/Albania/Land https://www.britannica.com/place/Albania/History https://www.britannica.com/topic/Albanian-language https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/albania/overview https://www.bankofalbania.org/About_the_Bank/Core_functions/Currency_issue.html The lek is the national currency. Hydropower describes electricity generation, not all energy consumption. Gheg and Tosk are broad dialect groups; Albanian forms its own Indo-European branch. Government and international institutions https://www.osce.org/presence-in-albania/41888 https://qeverisjavendore.gov.al/en/ https://enlargement.ec.europa.eu/countries/albania_en https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_52902.htm NATO accession: 1 April 2009. EU candidate status: 2014. Formal opening of accession negotiations: July 2022. Albania has twelve counties and 61 municipalities; the city map does not show their boundaries. Heritage and cultural traditions https://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/al/ https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/570/ https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/569/ https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/99/ https://ich.unesco.org/en/lists?RL=00155 Butrint, the Historic Centres of Berat and Gjirokastra, and the transboundary Ohrid region have different property boundaries. Berat and Gjirokastër share one World Heritage property. Iso-polyphony was proclaimed a Masterpiece in 2005 and inscribed on the Representative List in 2008. Nature https://iucn.org/press-release/202303/vjosa-one-our-last-wild-rivers-becomes-europes-first-wild-river-national-park https://iucn.org/story/202306/vjosa-national-park-making The Vjosa park was declared in March 2023 in Albania; the river begins in Greece as the Aoos. This guide avoids coastline-length comparisons because measurements differ with scale and method. MAP DATA AND SIGHT COORDINATES public/albania-land.geojson extracts the AL feature from the repository's public/countries.geojson, a generalised Natural Earth country outline (public domain): https://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/ public/albania-cities.geojson contains sixteen curated approximate settlement-centre coordinates, not municipal centroids or administrative boundaries. Names and location context can be cross-checked at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durr%C3%ABs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shkod%C3%ABr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lezh%C3%AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruj%C3%AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuk%C3%ABs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshkopi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbasan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlor%C3%AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gjirokast%C3%ABr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarand%C3%AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kor%C3%A7%C3%AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogradec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%ABrmet The two eight-place learning groups (North and centre; South) are teaching groups. No county, municipal-boundary or river game is represented. The sixteen sights carry individual Wikipedia article targets in src/lib/country-sights/albania.json. Essential and Worth a detour are editorial learning priorities. Village, lake and lagoon pins are representative points, not surveyed boundaries, visitor entrances or routes. Coordinates are checked against a 3 km margin around the generalised country outline. PHOTOGRAPHS Eleven existing Albanian photographs are reused from public/images/speak/albanian. Each guide photograph retains its Wikimedia Commons source page, author and licence in src/lib/country-guides/al.ts. The hero depicts Berat; topic covers depict Theth, Krujë, Korçë's school, a traditional folk group, Durrës harbour, Skanderbeg Square, the Blue Eye spring, tavë kosi, Gjirokastër Castle and Ismail Kadare. The source/credit inventory also exists in src/lib/european-speak-heroes.json and src/lib/facts-topic-overrides.json. Local copies avoid dependence on remote thumbnail availability. QUIZ REVIEW All eighty Albania seed questions were reviewed. Twenty-four original prompt keys receive read-time corrections, affecting twenty-five question records because a mountain-coverage prompt appeared in two topics. Corrections address ambiguous coast/lake answers, mountains versus hills, the 1991 election milestone, garment distinctions, diaspora and census wording, language names, flag symbolism, subjective rankings and food wording. Original seed data and database rows are unchanged. Lookup keys preserve question IDs and saved progress.