Himarë · Vlorë County · Albania

A hundred and twenty-eight metres up.

The pergola terrace: fluted black cast-iron columns carry beams hung with cast vine scrollwork, under flat cane panels, a thatch of dried grass and living grape vine, over pale blue tables and white chairs on gravel, with terracotta pots of geranium and the mountains beyond

Cast iron, cane and thatch, vine, and gravel underfoot.

A table laid on the terrace: white plates rimmed in dark blue, wine glasses and upturned cut-glass tumblers on bamboo slat mats, a zinc jug of dried flowers in the middle, and behind it a wall of irregular pale stone with a sage-green panelled door standing open onto a stone-walled room

The terrace tables, laid against the wall.

above the sea: 128m
back from the shore: 1km
from the centre of Himarë: 1.8km

ELÉA stands on the hillside behind Himarë, a hundred and twenty-eight metres above the sea and about a kilometre back from it. You come off the coast road and climb: a switchback of asphalt, then a short unsurfaced spur. What you arrive at is a terrace of cast-iron columns carrying cane, thatch and grape vine, tables on gravel, and a stone wall with a green door in it — and, past the pots of geranium, the ground falling away to the water.

Facing west

The sun goes down across the bay.

From up here the coast reads as one long line under the mountains: the olive slope below the terrace, the town strung along the shore, the water past it, and a dark headland on the far side of the bay for the sun to go down on.

Sunset over the Ionian: the sun dropping onto the ridge of a dark headland, open water to the left of it, and a town strung along the shore below

Three ways in

The terrace

Cast iron, cane and vine over gravel, and a green door in a stone wall.

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The table

What the marble carried: kataifi in syrup, and a bottle of the lager beside it.

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The road up

Off the coast road, a switchback, then a short unsurfaced spur.

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