Durrës layers two thousand years of history into a compact area around the old city centre. The Roman amphitheatre, the Byzantine walls, the Ottoman mosques, and the early 20th-century Royal Villa all sit within a short walk of each other — a density of historical layers that gives the city much more substance than its reputation as merely a beach resort suggests. The beach is there too, running south of the city along a long, flat Adriatic shoreline, but the history is what makes Durrës worth visiting.