Stretching along the Albanian Ionian Sea Coast, Sarandë has a Mediterranean climate with over 300 sunny days a year.

It owes its modern name to the nearby Byzantine monastery of the Forty Saints (Agioi Saranda) by which it became known from the High Middle Ages.

Owing to Venetian influence in the region, it often appeared under its Italian name Santi Quaranta on Western maps.

During the Italian occupation of Albania in World War II, Benito Mussolini changed the name to Porto Edda, in honor of his eldest daughter.

[10] In antiquity the city was known by the name of Onchesmus or Onchesmos and was a port-town of Chaonia in ancient Epirus, opposite the northwestern point of Corcyra, and the next port upon the coast to the south of Panormus.

It is thought that it was built by the descendants of Jewish captives who arrived on the southern shores of Albania around 70 CE,[22] during the First Jewish–Roman War.

From that year, the toponym borrows the name of the nearby Orthodox basilica church of Agioi Saranta, erected in the 6th century, ca.

[23] In the early 19th century during the rule of Ali Pasha, British diplomat William Martin Leake reported that there existed a small settlement under the name Skala or Skaloma next to the harbor.

[25] Following the Ottoman administrative reform of 1867, a müdürluk (independent unit) of Sarandë consisting of no other villages was created within the kaza (district) of Delvinë.

[26] Sarandë in the late Ottoman period until the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) consisted of only a harbour being a simple commercial station without permanent residents or any institutional community organisation.

[26] The creation of the Saranda müdürluk was related to the desires of Ottoman authorities to upgrade the port and reduce the economic dependence of the area on Ioannina and Preveza.

[27] One of the earliest photographs of Saranda dates from 3 March 1913 and shows Greek soldiers in the main street during the course of the Second Balkan War.

On 9 October 1944 the town was captured by a group of British commandos under Brigadier Tom Churchill and local partisans of LANÇ under Islam Radovicka.

[35] During this period as a result of the atheistic campaign launched by the state the church of Saint Spyridon in the harbor of the city was demolished.

[36] During the 1997 Albanian civil unrest, units comprised by the local Greek minority were able to achieve the first military success for the opposition through the capture of a government tank.

[43] Given its coastal access and Mediterranean climate, Sarandë has become an important tourist attraction since the fall of communism in Albania.

It has been suggested that family tourism and seasonal work during the summer period help mitigate the real unemployment rate.

Recently, the town has experienced an uncontrolled construction boom which may hamper the city's future tourism potential.

[54] In the early 1990s, the local Orthodox Albanian population mainly voted for political parties of the Greek minority based in the Saranda area.

[52][56] The city, according to the Albanian Committee of Helsinki, has lost more than half of its ethnic Greeks from 1991 to 2001, because of heavy emigration to Greece.