TIRANA, Jan. 22 – A Tirana downtown facility which has been serving as an intelligence service base since the notorious Sigurimi service during communist regime will be transformed into a museum featuring authentic and replica materials. A government decision has stripped the intelligence service of its downtown facility known as Gjethi (Leaf), placing it under the administration of the Culture Ministry which is working to turn it into a museum,
Built in 1931, the building first served as a clinic, before being taken over by the notorious German secret police Gestapo during WWII and the serving as Albania’s intelligence service base for more than four decades.
“The museum will feature the totalitarian control and its presence everywhere through interceptions in the form of pars pro toto, a part or aspect of something taken as representative of the whole,” says the Culture Ministry.
“The museum will have a multimedia language with a strong emphasis on the authentic. It will consist in original items used in the house, video, archive documents, graphs and explanatory texts,” adds the ministry.
A former building of the Sigurimi secret police which also served as a prison for the politically persecuted has also been turned into a museum in the northern Albanian city of Shkodra. The museum’s outdoor facilities including the airing yard have been reconstructed and personal items of political prisoners collected. Some audio effects have also been employed.
