Does Tirana Have a Zoo? What to Know Before You Go

Yes. Tirana Zoo, the only zoo in Albania, reopened in June 2022 after a complete rebuild, on a site between the capital's Grand Park and its Botanical Gardens. It's small, at about 5.5 hectares, so plan on an hour or two rather than a full day.

What not to miss

The zoo's big draw is its predator collection. As of April 2025 it kept four lions and three tigers, one of them a Siberian white tiger. It also holds Albania's first population of lemurs. Diets across the collection are approved by the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Featured location Tirana Zoo Tiranë, Albania No other zoo in the country is like it. Construction ran through 1960 and 1961, and the grounds cover 6.09 hectares in the southern part of the city, on land squeezed between the Botanical Gardens and the Grand Park.

The current zoo is only a few years old in its present form. It closed altogether in 2015, after video footage showed a bull attacking a donkey with no staff intervention, and the site stayed shut until a full rebuild reopened it in June 2022 with 160 animals of 30 species, a new lion pair and tiger pair among them, plus a Dino Zone and new recreational and teaching space. Tirana's mayor called the result possibly the most modern zoo in the Balkans. The rebuild cost 865 million lek and planted 1,200 new trees; officials have also said a second phase would connect the zoo to the neighbouring Botanical Garden, though no date has been set for that.

In the four years to September 2026, the zoo took in one tiger, two lions and one small bear from the State Police.

Best time to visit

Tirana's summers are hard on the animals, and that's worth building into your dates. In late August and September 2026, a veterinarian working with the zoo said it was seeing 38-42°C heat, and that almost no species anywhere — the camel possibly excepted — copes well at the top of that range. Staff responded by running water sprinklers three times a day, two hours at a time; the zoo's director has said future work will focus on making enclosures more varied, to give the animals more mental stimulation. Spring and autumn, or an early start on a summer day, avoid the hours when both the animals and you will feel it most.

Getting there

The zoo sits in the south of Tirana, sandwiched between the Grand Park and the Botanical Gardens, so it's easy to combine with a walk through either on the same trip. If you're driving, the 2022 rebuild added a 72-space car park that's half underground.

With kids and accessibility

The rebuild aimed squarely at families: the Dino Zone is its headline new attraction, alongside new recreational and teaching space. More recently it opened two subject-specific classrooms for visiting school groups, one for ichthyology and one for herpetology.

Other wildlife nearby

If you want to see animals in the wild rather than in an enclosure, Divjakë-Karavasta National Park on Albania's Adriatic coast is worth knowing about, even if it's too far from Tirana for the same day. It holds 5% of the world's population of the Dalmatian pelican and is their only breeding site anywhere on the Adriatic or Ionian seas.