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Kruja (Kru-yah) town is built around the foot of its sheer Fortress rock, 610 metres high. The castle, the citadel of the national hero Skënderbeg, is both shrine and monument to the aspiration of the Albanian nation.

It is built at a height of 548 metres on an isolated spur of the limestone mountain-wall of the Kruja range, and has spectacular views of the surrounding region. Kruja is thought to be named from the Albanian word Krua meaning a Spring. The citadel was used by the Illyrian tribes centred on nearby Zgërdhesh as early as the 6 BC, and have become the main Illyrian castle in the area after Zgërdhesh was abandoned in the 4th century of our era. The first Albanian feudal state, the Kingdom of Arbër, was formed here around the year 1190, with Kruja as an important part of its defensive system.
It is mentioned as an important castle in the writing of the Byzantine chronicler Georgius Akropolitis, who in 1245 called it Kroas, and it belonged to Gulam, the lord of Abanon. At the end of the 13th century it was taken by Charles of Anjou, who repaired the walls - after which it passed to the Thopia family.

In 1396 the Ottoman Turks occupied Kruja for the first time, but soon withdrew and did not reappear for another 20 years. In 1430 an uprising started under the leadership of Gjon Kastrioti, but it was crushed by Ottomans, (Gjon Kastrioti is the father of the Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastriot Skënderbeg).