Hoxha’s Pyramid to be site of new Parliament Building

TIRANA, Nov. 3 – The Parliament State Committee met Tuesday to launch an international tender on the construction a new Parliament Building and complex that is to be built on the site of Tirana’s landmark Pyramid building.
At the end of a debate, the committee decided to open the international tender and ask international architectural studios give their designs of the new parliament, expected to be ready by November 2012 in time for the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of independence, the creation of the Albanian state.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha of the governing Democratic Party and opposition Socialist Party leader Edi Rama clashed over the proposed demolition of Tirana’s iconic pyramid first inaugurated in 1988 as the museum for the late communist dictator Enver Hoxha.
Berisha said that extinction Hoxha’s mausoleum was a must and no trace of the late dictator should exist in the country.
Rama said preserving the Pyramid was of historic importance and nothing should be demolished in the country. He said that the Pyramid is serving as a cultural center named after one of Democrats’ leaders and former politically-persecuted dissident, the late Pjeter Arbnori. He also said that the government had first decided to rehabilitate and add to the existing building of the parliament headquarters and there was no need to demolish another building.
Many personalities in the country have contested the government decision, which was also passed in a parliament voting only with the votes of the governing Democrats.