Photo: Meriboo · CC BY-SA 3.0
The Banja Reservoir is the lake behind the Banjë dam on the Devoll river, near the village of Banjë in central Albania, part of the Devoll hydropower cascade. The power plant was built by Devoll Hydropower, a company owned by the Norwegian power company Statkraft, and completed in 2016. Work on the project began in the 1980s but stopped when Albania went bankrupt, and it was revived after the government signed a long concession agreement with Statkraft.
How it formed
The dam and power plant were built between 2013 and 2016. The lake lies among mountains near Gramsh, and the heights of Gjinari give wide views over it. A newly finished road to Gramsh has made the area easier to reach, and the plant itself draws visitors.
Gallery
Visit
Getting there
Nearest settlement: Gramsh
Swimming
No reliable information
Tips
Tours, usually from Tirana, Durrës or Gramsh, combine a boat trip on the lake with the Holta River Canyon, and a guided tour is the most reliable way to visit. Do not treat this as a bathing lake: there are no fences, warning signs or lifeguards, and pits left by the construction make the bottom treacherous. Four people from one family drowned here in July 2023.
Around Gramsh you can also visit Liqeni i Zi, the Black Lake, near Lenie, the Sotira waterfall, best in spring or early summer, and the Kabash cave.
Nearby lakes
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Sources & data
- Statkraft: Banja hydropower plant project page, Statkraft (operator)
- OpenStreetMap: Liqeni i Banjës (relation 12561697), OpenStreetMap contributors
- Wikidata: Lake Banja (Q99519088), Wikimedia Foundation
- Wikipedia: Banjë Hydro Power Plant, Wikimedia Foundation
- Wikipedia: Thermal Springs of Banjë, Wikimedia Foundation
- Full-day tour of Holta River Canyon and Banja Lake, TourHQ
- Lake Banja, a new tourist destination (2018), Shqiptarja.com
- The tragedy at Lake Banja (2023), Shqiptarja.com