Tirana

Tirana needs 2 days: Skanderbeg Square, the city's heart surrounded by museums, on one, and the BunkArt bunker, a Cold War-era air-raid shelter turned museum, on the other. April-June and September-October are best. It's among the cheapest capitals in Europe. Under Enver Hoxha's dictatorship, over 170,000 concrete bunkers were built across the country out of invasion paranoia, several now converted into museums and bars, and after the fall of communism the city was repainted with vividly colored facades as a symbol of renewal, a project driven by its former mayor and current president, artist Edi Rama.