After the Osum Canyons and ancient Lezha, the UNESCO World Heritage site of Gjirokastra was the third stop of the “Start your journey from your Albania” tour promoting Albanian tourist destinations and cultural heritage at the launch of the 2013 tourist season. The tour launched by the National Tourism Agency explored Gjirokastra town in southern Albania, which since 2005 has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a rare example of an architectural character typical of the Ottoman period. Downtown museums and monuments and surrounding areas such as the Drino Valley, the Antigone archeological park, the church of Labove e Kryqit and the Cajupi Mountain were some other sites promoted in the tour.
“In Gjirokastra, you can visit the local castle, the National Arms Museum, the Ethnographic Museum, the Bazaar Pass, and characteristic houses.
Speaking to reporters, Brikena Arapaj, the head of the National Tourism Agency said “We launched this tour all over Albania to show that Albania is a country which is visited during the whole year. Our message during these tours is that we can start our journey from our Albania quite well. We could spend a weekend in Gjirokastra starting from Antigone park, enjoying the wonderful landscape and the traditional local food. We can continue with the churches and turn back to Gjirokastra to visit the local castle and the wonderful houses with their special stories,” says Arapaj.
The Albanian Aero Club led by Alket Islami also joined the tour with some parachute stunts from the Cajupi Mountain.
“The Capjupi Mountain area, the Bureto part and the Mali i Gjere Mount offer great skydiving opportunities. The geography, archeology, cultural heritage and parachuting sport match perfectly,” says Islami who has also photographed Albania from the air in several albums.
Gjirokastra
Inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list as a rare example of architectural character typical of the Ottoman period, Gjirokastra, which is located in the Drinos river valley in southern Albania, features a series of outstanding two-story houses which were developed in the 17th century. The town also retains a bazaar, an 18th-century mosque and two churches of the same period.
Gjirokastra was built by major landowners. Around the ancient 13th century citadel, the town has houses with turrets (the Turkish kule) which are characteristic of the Balkans region. Gjirokastra contains several remarkable examples of houses of this type, which date from the 17th century, but also more elaborate examples dating from the early 19th century.
“Gjirokastra bears outstanding testimony to the diversity of urban societies in the Balkans, and to longstanding ways of life which have today almost vanished. The town planning and housing of Gjirokastra are those of a citadel town built by notable landowners whose interests were directly linked to those of the central power,” says UNESCO.
Gjirokastra is situated in the Drino valley which lies between the dramatic Lunxheria mountain range to the east and Mount Gjer롴o the west. It has a population of 35,000, and is the economic and administrative centre for the Gjirokastra District, which includes the town of Libohov롡nd communes of Antigone, Lower Dropulli, Upper Dropulli, Lazarat, Lunxh쳩, Odrie, Picar, Pogon, Qend철Libohov묠and Zagori. The majority of Gjirokastrans are ethnic Albanians with a minority of Greeks, as well as small communities of Vlachs and Romas.
Castle
The castle, which is undoubtedly one of the most magnificent structures of the city, sits on a rocky bluff with the city stretching out around it. It offers spectacular views of the Drino valley and surrounding mountains. The castle has undergone various additions and changes over the course of the centuries. The first major fortifications were built under the Despots of Epirus in the 12th and 13th centuries. After the Ottoman conquest of the late 14th century the most extensive improvements were made around 1490 by Sultan Beyazid II. From 1811, the Ottoman governor Ali Pasha of Tepelena added many elements, including the clock tower on the eastern side. He also completed fortifying the full area of the bluff. In addition, he built an aqueduct to bring water to the castle from distance of over 10 km from the surrounding mountains. Since Ali Pasha’s time the castle has fallen into disrepair. In the 1930s it was redesigned as a prison by the Italians at the request of King Zog, and was closed in the 1960s.
Things to see in the castle:
Bektashi Turbe (tomb)
Situated to the right about 50m inside the main gate you will see a small building tucked into the walls of the castle amidst a lovely garden. It contains the remains of two Bektashi Babas.
Artillery Gallery
Turning left from the main entrance, you will enter a long gallery lined with artillery pieces. All of these guns were either abandoned by, or captured from, the Italian and German occupation forces during World War II. Within this gallery there is also a small Italian tank built by Fiat.
National Museum of Armaments
Originally opened in 1971, the National Museum of Armaments is located in what was once the part of the prison. The current displays cover Albanian arms from independence in 1912 to the end of World War II, and most of the museum is dedicated to the Partisan struggle against the Italian and German occupation forces from 1939 to 1944.
The prison
The entrance to the prison is in the first gallery of the National Armaments Museum. Completed in 1932, the prison was used by King Zog’s regime followed by the Italian and German occupation forces during the Second World War, and finally the communist regime until 1968. The only part of the prison that is accessible to visitors was developed as a museum by the communist regime in the 1970s. You may also gain access to the roof of the prison, going up the ramp situated to the right of the main gate.
The American Airplane
The remains of a United States Air Force T33 Shooting Star are exhibited on the ramparts overlooking the city. The airplane was forced to land at Rinas Airport, near Tirana in December 1957 due to technical problems.
Ethnographic Museum:
The ethnographic museum is situated in the Palorto Quarter, which is the best preserved district in the old town of Gjirokastra. The Ethnographic Museum stands on the site of the home of Enver Hoxha, communist dictator of Albania from 1944 to 1985. The museum building was constructed in 1966 after the original house was destroyed by fire. The reconstruction was designed as a model traditional Gjirokastra house with many classic features known to have been copied from particular houses around the city. From 1966 to 1991 the building served as the Anti-Fascist Museum. In 1991 the exhibits from the previous Ethnographic Museum were moved into this space. The house has four floors, all of which are open to the public.
The rooms are arranged as they would have actually been used and are decorated with numerous household items, folk costumes and cultural artefacts typical of a wealthy Gjirokastra family of merchants or Ottoman administrators living in the 19th Century.
The Labov롥 Kryqit church
One of the most interesting monuments in Albania, the church of Labov롥 Kryqit, which is devoted to Saint Mary, is reached from the road to Libohova that runs east from the main highway south of Gjirokastra. Labov롥 Kryqit is a few kilometres further on, after the road regains an asphalt surface and enters the village. The whole journey takes around 40 minutes. The church of Labova e Kryqit is one of the oldest in Albania and once contained a holy relic believed to be a fragment of the true cross. It was from this relic that the village took its name. The relic was stolen during the civil unrest in the early 1990s. The building is typically Byzantine with a high central cupola with nave and aisles arranged in a cruciform plan. A later narthex provides the principal entrance. There are nine distinct levels of fresco painting on the interior walls. The church seen today is essentially a creation of the 13th century at the time of the Despots of Epirus, although an original foundation may go back to AD 527-565 and the reign of Emperor Justinian. The keys are held by the custodian Kristo Luzi who lives across the street.
Antigonea
Antigonea was a very short-lived city, lasting for approximately 150 years. It was founded by one of the most famous names of the ancient world, King Pyrrhus of Epirus (319-272 BC), from whom the phrase “a Pyrrhic victory” derives. At the outset of the 3rd-century BC Pyrrhus was forced to go and fight in Egypt. His abilities impressed Berenice, the wife of King Ptolemy of Egypt, who decided to offer him her daughter, Antigone, in marriage. In token of his gratitude to his mother-in-law and his first wife, Pyrrhus decided to build Antigoneia.
In 198 BC the Romans defeated the Macedonian armies of King Philip V. The inhabitants of Antigoneia had sided with the Macedonians in their war against the Roman Republic and hence when the Romans obtained total victory in 167 BC, they decided to punish the Epirots who had fought against them. The Roman Consul Aemilius Paullus looted and set fire to 70 towns in Epirus including Antigoneia. The town was never rebuilt.
FAMOUS PEOPLE FROM GJIROKASTRA
Ismail Kadare
Ismail Kadare, the award-winning Albanian writer, was born in Gjirokastra in 1936. Translated into over 30 languages his books have an international appeal. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature and was a winner of the 2005 Man Booker International Prize. Two of Kadare’s works are exclusively about Gjirokastra: “Kronik롮롇ur” (Chronicle in Stone) and “ȫshtje t롭arr컩s뢠(Matters of Madness). Both books are available in English, French and other languages.
Kadare’s childhood home was in the Palorto Quarter in the heart of the Old Town close to the Bazaar. The area was recently badly damaged by fire and is currently being restored by the Albanian Institute of Monuments.
In 1990, before the collapse of the Albanian communist regime, Kadare travelled to France where he successfully applied for political asylum, at the time he is quoted as saying “dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible… The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.” A member of the French Academy and a Knight of the Legion of Honour, he also holds the most important Albanian medal: Honour of the Nation.
Enver Hoxha
The history of Albania in the 20th century is dominated by Enver Hoxha. He was born in Gjirokastra in 1908 to a middle class family of merchants on the site of what is now the Ethnographic Museum. Hoxha was a founding member of the Albanian Communist Party and during the war became its leader. After the war the communists took power making all other political parties illegal, as party chairman, Enver Hoxha became the absolute ruler of Albania.
During Hoxha’s ruthless premiership, Albania underwent intensive industrialization using the Stalinist economic model with foreign aid from the Soviet Union. Hoxha’s regime confiscated privately owned farmland and established collective farms, as well as engaging in massive land reclamation projects to increase arable land and boost food production. All this was done in the context of an internal class struggle that sanctioned the repression by imprisonment or execution of anyone who was opposed to the regime.
Like Stalin, Hoxha used a combination of nationalism and charisma to unite the disparate elements of the Albanian people; meanwhile his secret police spied on the population and eliminated Hoxha’s perceived or actual enemies. However, his regime did improve living standards for many Albanians through improved access to education and the provision of utilities, such as electricity, to rural areas. Hoxha was paranoid of opposition from outside of Albania and constructed hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers to provide a first line of defence should invasion threaten. (Gjirokastra.org)
