The cobbled bazaar street (Pazari i Vjetër) climbs from the modern town up to the castle gate — a hundred and fifty metres of one-storey timber shopfronts with overhanging upper floors, very little changed since the Ottoman period. About 150 of the original 200 shops survive, mostly trading in antique copperware, hand-loomed textiles, traditional rugs, carved wooden objects, and the standard tourist souvenirs.
This is the best place in Albania to buy a genuine kelim or a hand-stitched waistcoat, though you should bargain hard and know what you are looking at. The traders are friendly, speak some English or Italian, and many genuine Ottoman and Italian-period antiques surface here.