2 stops in walking order

Castle

The Lezhë Castle is a castle dominating the city of Lezhë, northern Albania. Its highest point is 186 metres (610 ft). Lezhë Castle is at an elevation of 322 metres (1,056 ft). Lezhë Castle began as a Illyrian fortification. The earliest events where the name of Lissus appears to relate to the foundation of a Parian-Sicilian colony in the island of Pharos (modern Hvar) and the alliance of 385 B.C.E. between the Illyrian king Bardylis and Dionysius I the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse during 405 B.C.E. – 367 B.C.E. In this context Diodorus writes the following: “He had already dispatched a colony to the Adriatic not many years previously and had founded the city known as Lissus” (Diodorus, XV, 13).

~20 min at this stop

Church

The St. Nicholas Church, also known as the Selimije Mosque, the Church-Mosque of Lezhë (Kisha-Xhami), and, since the 1980s, as the Skanderbeg National Memorial, is a former temple and subsequently a Catholic church and a former Islamic mosque, and now a mausoleum and monument that contains the remains of Skanderbeg. The structure is located in Lezhë, Albania. Likely to have been established in c. 1st century BC, the building was repurposed as a church and then as a mosque after 1478. The mosque got partially destroyed in c. 1967, and again repurposed as a mausoleum in 1981. The structure is thus now in a ruinous state.

~20 min at this stop