As the hot, beach-perfect summer days are behind us and the winter with its enticing opportunities for playing in the snow is still far away, BalkanTravellers.com provides you with five places throughout the Balkans that warrant a visit during the autumn. Going to any of these off-the-beaten-track places is an awarding experience at any time of the year, but the traveller who ventures there during the off-season has them even more to himself than usual.

1. Transylvania, Romania



The region north of the city of Braşov, part of Romania’s Transylvania region, has been home to a large ethnic German community, known as the Transylvanian Saxons, since the twelfth century. Although many of them were expelled or fled the area during and after the Second World War, some remained and it is possible today to visit their picturesque villages.

The area’s other attraction are the numerous old citadels, including the fortified church built around 1100 in the village of Viscri, the two castles at Hoghiz and the sixteenth-century church in Cloasterf.

Read more about the Transylvania area on BalkanTravellers.com

2. Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina



The town of Višegrad in the eastern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina was made famous by Nobel prize winning author Ivo Andrić’s novel Bridge on the Drina[ital]. The main tourist attraction in the town is walking across the legendary sixteenth-century Ottoman bridge, now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Višegrad, which used to be a multiethnic community of Muslims and Christians for centuries, is now inhabited almost entirely by Serbian Orthodox Christians, as a result of the massacre, which killed and chased away about 14,000 Bosnians in 1992. Traces of this dark and sinister part of the town’s history are still apparent throughout it and – although disturbing, they are an important reminder of that past.

Read more about Višegrad on BalkanTravellers.com

3. Byllis, Albania



The little-known and underdeveloped archaeological site of Byllis in the south-central part of Albania not only boasts ancient remains but it is also set amid breath-taking views.

Founded by the the Illyrians during the fourth century BC, Byllis was conquered and eventually abandoned by the Romans in 586AD. The ruins that are visible today testify for the city’s history and its inhabitants: some of the original walls built by the Illyrians in the third century BC still remain, as do traces of the impressive theatre from the same period.

The Romans built a second set of fortification walls, called Vicotrinus’s wall, and left behind a large number of churches, of which most impressive are the fourth-century Cathedral’s remains.

Read more about Byllis on BalkanTravellers.com

4. Subotica, Serbia



For many travellers, the city of Subotica in the northernmost part of Serbia is nothing more than a stop along the highway connecting Belgrade to Budapest. Those who bother to stop by it, however, are awarded with a hidden treasure of a city whose various inhabitants in the last several centuries have created an unusual, yet pleasant, architectural mixture.

Serbs, Croatians, Hungarians, Austrians, Russians and Romanians left their mark on the city at the end of the nineteenth century when they flocked to the nearby Palić Lake for what was the prototype of modern spa-tourism, mud baths. Combined with the influence of the Jews who were already living there and that of the Hungarian and German craftsmen who had settled there at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Subotica presents an unusual mix: the sharp towers and fountains, typical of Bavaria, meet with the simple architecture of the Hungarian Pusta and the light style of the Austro-Hungarian countryside. But probably most impressive are Subotica’s many Art Nouveau-style buildings, constructed at the beginning of the twentieth century, including the City Hall, the Synagogue and the Artistic Encounter building.

Read more about Subotica on BalkanTravellers.com

5. The Remains of Troy near Çanakkale, Turkey



This area, along Turkey’s Aegean coast, boasts beaches that are both empty of foreign tourists and affordable, even in August. But, while vacationing in the area is a possibility for those who want to avoid tourist crowds, one of the main reasons to head in that direction are the ruins of the ancient city of Troy.

Just 20 kilometres south of Çanakkale, Troy was though to exist only in legend until 1971, when a German obsessed with ancient Greece financed the excavations that unearthed the ancient site from underneath nine layers of city remains.

Although the site leaves much to the imagination as it contains little more than a regrettable reproduction of the legendary wooden horse, it is nevertheless quite an experience to thread on the grounds of the former epic city.

Read more about Çanakkale and Troy on BalkanTravellers.com