TERRITORY: CLIMATE
According to itypeusa, there are significant environmental differences between the coastal strip and the interior, especially in relation to altitude, which determines significant variations in the climate. This is typically Mediterranean in the coastal region and gradually takes on more continental characteristics towards the inland mountains, where winter temperatures drop significantly, also due to the influences of the Balkan-Sarmatic continental air masses. In relation to the configuration of the country, the isotherms are arranged parallel to the coast, where in July and January there are averages of 25 ºC and 10 ºC respectively, while in Coriza, located at approx. 900 m. altitude, are 19 ºC and –2 ºC. The isoiete they have a more complex trend: rainfall in general decreases from N to S and reaches the highest values in the Albanian Alps, where approx. 2200 mm of precipitation, partly snowy; on the coast, no more than 600 mm of rain fall, exclusively in winter.
HISTORY: FROM THE ILLYRIANS TO THE END OF THE OTTOMAN RULE
Albania had its first political expressions in the kingdoms of the Illyrians and Epirus, conquered by the Romans in the century. II a. C. Towards the middle of the century. III, in fact, an Illyrian kingdom created, by strengthening the fleet and exercising the piracy that threatened Roman interests on the coast, the premise for the clash with Rome, which wished to exercise dominance over the Adriatic. In 229 a. C. broke out the first of the wars that ended in 168 BC. C. with the conquest of the whole territory by the Romans. The Illyrian, with much wider borders than today’s Albania, was first a senatorial province and then an imperial one. After the division of the Empire, the Albanian territories became part of the provinces of Prevalitana and Epirus nova were assigned to the Eastern Empire, which however, except for the brief period of Justinian ‘s reconquest (535), had only nominal control of the country. Albania was actually under the control of the Serbs, who called by Byzantium to defend the borders of the Empire, established in the century. VII numerous autonomous principalities and subsequently the Bulgarians (917-1019), who conquered the central-southern part of the country. Starting from the sec. XI, meanwhile, Venice, Amalfi and the Normans, having intensified relations with the eastern coast of Albania, tried to impose their influence. In 1204, after the IV Crusade, Venice was able to formally obtain sovereignty over the whole of Albania, where in reality numerous autonomous lordships were formed which, Michele Angelo Comneno, rejected the dominance of Venice. After a second Bulgarian domination (1230) the Albanian territories passed partly to the Serbs (Dušan and Balša dynasties) and partly returned to the Angels, who in 1259, when their territories passed as a dowry to Elena Angelo, daughter of the despot of Epirus, in Manfredi di Svevia, possessed vast areas of central-southern Albania (these territories were later claimed and partly conquered by the Angevins). The Serbian defeat of Cossovo (1389) also opened Albania to the Ottoman invasion, hampered only by the presence of Venice which it had conquered between the end of the century. XIII and the beginning of the XIV some bases in Albania. Venice, however, could not have opposed any resistance to the Turkish penetration into the interior of the country, weakened by the particularism and discord between the various lordships. Giorgio Castriota known as Scanderbeg managed to unify and heroically lead the insurrection against the Ottoman dominion and from 1444, united under him in the League of Albanian Peoples the forces of the local lords, he fought almost incessantly against the Turks until 1468. On his death, however, the dominion Ottoman quickly spread across the country. By leaving the government to semi-autonomous local leaders and spreading Islam, the Turks contributed to accentuating the historical factors of internal dissociation, already peculiar to Albania. With the Berlin Congress (1878) the Albanian territories, taken from the Christian peoples to the Ottoman Empire, were largely assigned to Greece, Serbia and Montenegro. The League of Prizren, the first form of national resistance, on which the suspicion of being inspired by Turkey weighed, however, tried to oppose the implementation of the treaty. After 1908 a national insurrection broke out against the Ottoman regime of the Young Turks; later the First Balkan War (1912) offered the Christian belligerents a new opportunity for the partition of Albania, while Italy and Austria intervened in the situation trying to assert their influence in the country.
