A modest stone marker in the lower town commemorates the spot where Ali Pasha of Ioannina — the most consequential Ottoman governor of the early 19th century — was born in 1740. The original house is gone, but the town has long taken its identity from him: he rebuilt the castle, transformed the town's fortunes, and made Tepelena one of the small but important centres of the late Ottoman Balkans.
Ali Pasha's career — ruthless, ambitious, eventually ended by the Sultan's troops on an island in Ioannina lake in 1822 — is one of the most colourful in the region's history. The Lord Byron line "Tepalen was once the proud strong-hold of Ali Pasha" remains the town's defining quotation.