A new road linking Berat castle with the museum city will completely free the pedestrians’ road from the traffic, ease traffic to the Castle, an important tourist attraction, and it will also provide a wholly new transportation service to the visitors to one of highly-sought cultural heritage sites in the area.
“It is a strategic investment for the city of Berat,” Mayor Ervin Demo said, as he accompanied Prime Minister Edi Rama during an inspection of the road’s entire stretch. “Work to consolidate structural engineering artworks has kicked off as the existing road will be widened. Work continues along entire road stretch, including the section where traditional cobble stone paving is being laid as this sections leads to the church.”
Due to its special location, the new road will also offer a wonderful panorama. Yet the most important value of the new road is that it will enable easy access for cars from the hillside to definitely provide a car-free inner alleyway heading to the city Castle. It will significantly ease access and reduce traditionally congested traffic to the Castle during the peak of the summer tourism season in particular. The lack of this infrastructure has actually been one of the incurring problems we have been encountering with the tourism operators, as the old existing road was narrow and it was very difficult for two busses to share road space at the same time. At the peak of the season, we used to encounter a lot of problems with the visitor busses to share the road’s width and find a parking place at the Castle’s upper part,” Mayor Demo explained.
PM Rama urged local government authorities to prepare the site for construction of an adjacent main square. “We need to launch work to construct the main square down there. It is time to remove the old square and a new one be built instead to become a popular attraction and a fresh gravity for Berat,” PM Rama said.
In the meantime, local government structures in Berat are also working to build a public parking lot close to the roundabout area at the Castle’s entrance.
