Sailors carved their names into the limestone of Grama Bay for roughly two thousand years, and hundreds of those inscriptions survive. Some are Greek, some Latin, some medieval.
They record crews who sheltered here while waiting out the wind, and quarry workers who cut stone from the cliffs for shipment across the Adriatic. The bay's name derives from the Greek word for letters. A dhermi boat tour grama bay itinerary is, in effect, a passage into an open-air epigraphic archive that no road reaches.
The bay sits on the western flank of the Karaburun Peninsula, inside the Karaburun-Sazan Marine National Park — Albania's first marine protected area, declared in 2010. The park covers roughly 12,570 hectares of seabed and coastline. Its waters shelter posidonia meadows, loggerhead turtles and, occasionally, Mediterranean monk seals. The peninsula itself was a closed military zone for much of the twentieth century, and that enforced isolation is precisely why the cliffs remain undeveloped. There is no village at Grama, no jetty, no kiosk. The address is simply Grama Bay, Karaburun-Sazan Marine National Park, Albania.
Geologically, the coast is a wall of Cretaceous limestone, fractured and undercut by the sea into caves that run for tens of metres inland. Haxhi Ali Cave, further north near Sazan, is the largest of them. The rock is pale enough that the water above the shingle reads turquoise, then cobalt where the shelf drops away. Fresh springs seep from the cliff base, cooling the surface in patches that swimmers notice immediately.
What gives the site its standing today is the combination of inaccessibility and legibility. The quarry faces still show tool marks. The inscriptions still name individuals. Albanian and international epigraphers have catalogued the panels since the 1970s, and the record continues to be revised. Conservationists have pushed for tighter mooring rules to protect the seagrass, and operators running Karaburun coastal sailings work within park guidance. Entry to the natural site itself is free — 0 EUR — because Grama Bay is reached only by water. Consequently, the dhermi boat tour grama bay tickets sold along the Riviera are passage, not admission, and the shoreline remains as the sailors left it: bare stone, clear water, and writing.
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