Forsaken Albania

Albania, at the turn of the 20th Century. Mankind had been traveling for thousands and thousands of years and bridges, even more than roads, have managed to become the symbol of travel. This is because every road reaches a moment when it is put to the test, and that moment is when the road reaches a point where it must span a river, a stream or a valley. Albania has so many of these natural obstacles which put roads to the test, and subsequently, today, we should have had a heritage of endless bridges. However, this is not the case for two principle reasons: first, the strict ????? in this country and second because the Albanians did not travel much. The territory of our country has a characteristic which makes bridges even more indespensible. The majority of the rivers flow parallel to one another, in same direction from west to east, discecting the country into wide bands. So whoever wanted to travel from north to south had to cross numerous rivers, big and small. However, the thing was that the Albanians, in general a stabilized rural society, did not have any strong reasons to travel, so bridges of this catagory were not a priority. More frequent were bridges of a medium and small size, deeper inland, linking smaller areas. On the other hand, bridges in towns and cities are very rare in Albania, even in towns built on the banks of rivers or streams. No more than two such bridges have survived through to our days from the past, the bridge of Kurt Pascha in Berat and the Bridge of the Tabaks in Tirana. There are plenty of cities in Albania constructed on the banks of rivers, but which have never had a bridge, such as Shkodra,Lezha,Durres, Fier or Korca. There are other towns that had their own bridges once but which did not survive through to our days – Tepelena, Permet, Kelcyra. All bridges still standing in Albania today, belong to the 18th and 19th Centuries, and I believe that this is because, precisely at this time, the movement of people and commodities increased. The old bridges that had managed to survive were dealt the cruellest blow precisely when they throught that they faced a tranquil “retirement.” During World War One a very large number of these bridges were blown up, a process that continued mercilessly throughout World War Two as well.
The first is a photograph of the Vezir’s Bridge which is on the Shkodra-Prizren road, built by the Vezirs of Bushat, after whom it was named and which was probably the most elegant and beautiful of bridges in our country, it was such a handsome structure that of course it did not have a chance of survival.
The second photograph shows the Bridge of Kordhoca, a photograph of the 20-ties. This bridges still stands to this day, on the road between Gjirokastra and Kakavije, few kilometers out from Gjirokastra city.
The third photograph shows the sad end to a magnificent bridge over the River Vjosa, blown up during WWII. Later on the engineering units of the Italian Armed forces did some repair work amongst the ruins of the once splended structure, building a temporary suspended carriage spanning the river.