Elbasan Castle

Elbasan Castle, locally known as Kalaja e Elbasanit, lies in the city of the same name, in the county of Elbasan in Albania.

Although called a castle, Elbasan Castle was actually a Roman castrum, a fortification to house a legion. It was built during the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian, between 284 and 305 AD, and was called Mansio Scampis. It was situated on the Via Egnatia (an important Roman road linking the Adriatic coast to Byzantium), which ran right through it.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the legion had left. The castle's location in a wide river valley made it vulnerable, so it was rebuilt in the 6th century, during the reign of Byzantine emperor Justinian I.

At some point in time the site seems to have been abandoned until the 15th century, when the Ottoman Empire took over. Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror then had the castle rebuilt and turned into a garrison town in 1466, during his ongoing conflict with the League of Lezhë, led by the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg. It was then that it got its name Ijl-basan, meaning something like 'the owned fortress', which later became Elbasan.

For the next 445 years the town was the seat of the Sanjak (Ottoman county) of Elbasan. The fortress was finally dismantled in 1832 by the Ottoman grand vizier Reşid Mehmed Pasha, after quelling the Bosnian uprising.

Elbasan Castle is freely accessible. It is now a quiet neighborhood in the busy city. What remains of its walls are mainly the south wall, with its towers, and parts of the west and east wall. The rest has disappeared in the fabric of the houses and shops.

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