Lëkurësi Castle is on a strategic hill point overlooking the town of Saranda, southeast of the town centre. From here one can control the whole town as well as the islands of Ksamil. The castle was built in 1537 by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent who had attacked Corfu and needed to control the harbor of Saranda and the road that connected it with Butrint.
The region traditionally belonged to the southern part of the region of Himara. At the end of the 18th century the castle was attacked by Ali Pasha of Ioannina and the surrounding habitation raided.
The castle used to withhold the old Lëkurës village. It has a square shape with two round towers on its north-western and south-eastern corners. To climb up to the castle, visitors need to leave the main road on Qafë Gjashtë and go up the town hill from the other side of the town.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.