You come into Kruja (pronounced: Kru-yah) past age-old olive trees and lime-kilns, with limestone outcrops offering the barest grazing to a few sheep and goats. Then shrubs and oaks replace the olives, and finally the conifers take over. "Kruj'" means "Spring" and of course there is no shortage of fresh water at these cool heights. The air invigorates you after the hot, humid plain of Tirana, and one can easily imagine why the old Ilyrrian settlement of Zg'rdhesh was abandoned in the forth century, and the refugees from the hotter, more exposed foothills chose to defend a mountain eyrie instead.

The ecclesiastical record of the ninth century mentioned Kruj' as a bishop's see. The byzantine held the city up to c.1190, when the first Albanian feudal state was declared at Kruj' under the archon Progon (1190-8). Arbania survived throughout the rule of Progon's son Gjin (1198-1206) and Dhimitrit (1206-16), but in 1216 it fell under the sway of Epiros, in 1230 under Bulgarians, and in 1240 again under Epiros. Foreign invaders continue to fight over the dying body of a torn and bleeding Albania until an Ottoman garrison was permanently stationed at Kruj' in 1415. The youngest of Gjon Kastrioti's four sons, Gjergj, was sent with his three brothers as a hostage to the Sultan at Constantinople in 1415. He impressed his tutors at the military school he attended and they gave him the title "Skender-beg" for the valour on the field of battle. Then in 1443 he suddenly left the Ottoman army fighting Hunyadi, the Hungarian Hero and returned to Albania. As the Turks retreated near Nish on 3 November 1443, Gjergj withdrew his nephew Hamza and 300 Albanian horsemen and headed for Dib'r and then Kruj'.