Balkan's Landscape as per the Records of Foreign Travelers in Past Centuries

Geographical studies on characteristics and diversity of the landscape in the Balkans have frequently referred to the portrayals by travelers from different countries, who, due to their work as diplomats and officials or simply as a result of their curiosity, visited various areas of Balkan.Putting the Balkans’ in the attention of Europe, through its recognition and recovery, both in the XIX-th century and in the beginning of the XX-th century, travelling was a process carried out as a geographical recovery, but also as an ethnographic, psychological and cultural recovery. Through the structure of travel, which is a physical displacement, the individual is given the possibility to observe, which, in its turn, encourages the need for description and analysis. The usual destination of travelers coming from Europe was Greece, serving as a special attraction because of its antique ancient culture. This was the reason why these territories were visited before by European travelers, as diplomats or cultural tourists, while Albanian was either not known at all, or known very little.Cultural discovery not only served as aesthetic pleasure of discovering a new ethnographic culture, but in a way in the writings which was reflected the contact with the culture became responsible even for the recognition and perception of the Balkans and its peoples in Europe.