Showing 1-5 of 5 results
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Council of Ministers Building
The Council of Ministers Building still has an impressive socialist relief, along with the 2nd-floor balcony where Enver Hoxha and cronies would stand and view military parades.
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Former Residence of Enver Hoxha
Nestled between Parku Kombëtar (a public park), the Bulevardi Dëshmorët e Kombit and the river is the once totally forbidden but now totally trendy Blloku, the former exclusive Communist Party neighbourhood. When the area was opened to the general public in 1991, Albanians flocked to see the style in which their proletarian leaders lived. Judging by this three-storey pastel-coloured house the Albanian proletarian leaders lived a much simpler life than their comrades in Romania, for example.
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Fortress of Justinian
Along Rruga Murat Toptani are the 6m-high walls of the Fortress of Justinian, the last remnants of a Byzantine-era castle.
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Martyrs' Cemetery
The Martyrs' Cemetery is at the top of the hill, on the other side of the road, and is where some 900 partisans who died in WWII are buried. The views over the city and surrounding mountains are excellent. Many still come here, clutching laurel sprigs to pay their respects under the shadow of the immense, beautiful and strangely androgynous Mother Albania statue (1972). Hoxha was buried here in 1985, but was exhumed in 1992 and interred in an ordinary graveyard on the other side of town.
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Palace of Culture
Construction began as a gift from the Soviets in 1960 although it was delayed by the 1961 Soviet-Albanian split.
Showing 1-5 of 5 results
