The museum’s yard facing the local seafront promenade has been turned into a mini-park featuring giant archeological objects among decorative trees and green areas.
TIRANA, July 8 – After three years of prolonged restoration work, the Durres archeological museum, one of the country’s most important cultural heritage institutions, will reopen its doors to visitors by next August. In a televised interview from the museum’s facilities, Culture Minister Mirela Kumbaro said restoration works are expected to conclude soon and by next August the museum will be open to visitors again.
Almost all archeological items, a testimony to the ancient city’s 3000-year-old history, have undergone restoration during the past three years of the museum’s restoration.
Ledion Lako, the new director of the museum, says the reopening will find the museum reconceived with newly designed exhibition spaces. The museum’s yard facing the local seafront promenade has been turned into a mini-park featuring giant archeological objects among decorative trees and green areas.
The archeological museum of Durres, a testimony to the ancient city’s 3000-year-old history along with the ancient Roman amphitheatre, has been under restoration since September 2011. The initial project envisaged the museum the restoration project would conclude in 2012 during the country’s 100th anniversary of independence.
The reconstruction has made possible the improvement of the building’s architecture and its exhibition spaces. A library and conference has also been made available in the new museum premises. The reconstruction has also included objects which are on display in the museum’s front garden, apart from inner works in the three-storey cubist architecture museum building.
Some 2,100 objects belonging to the period before the foundation of the city until the fourth century are part of its collection, specialists say.
Lonely Planet tourist guide, which in 2011 placed Albania as the top global destination to visit, describes the archaeological museum situated on the waterfront as well laid out with an impressive collection of artefacts from the Greek, Hellenistic and Roman periods. Highlights include engraved Roman funeral stelae (memorial stones) and some big carved stone sarcophagi. “Back in the day when the city was called Epidamnos, Durr쳠was a centre for the worship of Venus, and the museum has a cabinet bursting with little busts of the love goddess.”
Inaugurated in 1953 during the communist regime, the current museum opened in 2001. Along with the ancient Durres Amphitheatre, the archeological museum is on top of the agenda of visitors who come to see the ancient site which boasts a rich cultural heritage.
