Forsaken Albania

By Artan lame
Vlora, May 1941. Last week I spoke about King Victor Emanuel III’s visit to Albania, and I think I’ll continue with this visit, this time, in the city of Vlora. The King arrived in Vlora after travelling down from Tirana, the first stop in his visit to the South of the country, including Gjirokastra. Different from Tirana and Durr쳬 where new urban development plans had been implemented which had opened up very spacious areas in their centres as city squares, Vlora at that time did not have very much to offer in the way of open public space to organize a gathering in. I have never understood why the Italians did not implement the regulatory plan for this city which they had worked on and compiled themselves and which would have formatted Vlora as a modern city too. Anyway, in view of the fact that there was nothing better, it was decided that the King would appear in public in the building seen in the photograph, which was located in the very centre of the city, somewhere between the mosque of Muradije and the Square of the Flag, on the far side of the street.
The building was an elegant edifice of the twenties’, with a slightly mixed Roman and neo-classic style, but unfortunately it did not have a balcony or a window that was sufficiently wide for several individuals to wave from. The solution was found of removing the column which divided the two windows on the second floor and hence gaining enough width. To prevent the arches from collapsing which no longer had any support base, a horizontal beam was fixed in place, which was wrapped in a brilliant red fabric so it didn’t look bad. You can see this element in Photo 1. Beneath the window hangs the Albanian flag with elements surrounding the Eagle, that had been added after the occupation,. King Victor Emanuel III appears at the centre of the window, flanked on one side by the Prime Minister Shefqet V쳬aci and on the other side by Viceoy Jakomoni.
66 years ago, I was on the same spot and I took a photograph of the same building. It is not hard to see just how badly it has been left to disintegrate. The window on the first floor has been blotted out by a side annex jutting out from another building, while the gateway has been covered with a tin roof, under which all sorts of rubbish is sold. They never put the column back between the two windows again, so the biggest of the windows has been filled with a brick wall. The other window shutters and windows themselves hang off their hinges, and after many decades of rain and sunshine, the roof has also begun to sag and cave in.The painted pattern in squares under the roof, appears to have been something too extragavant for someone, so they took a shortcut and painted the entire building, I don’t believe this poor building has been massacred so mercilessly out of hatred for the invador, but simply because of our outstanding ability to neglect things. And don’t tell me that poverty is to blame; its true that the building is peeling and crumbling, but there is no lack of TV satellite dishes, there are at least four.