Specialists blame the degradation of the mosaic with its hurried creation in 1981, humid conditions, and lack of interventions
TIRANA, Jan. 22 – The giant mosaic featured in the central facade of the National Museum of History in Tirana is under threat. Dozens of mosaic pieces have collapsed from the mosaic forming black stains in the mosaic which has been displaying since more than three decades.
Specialists blame the degradation of the mosaic with its hurried creation in 1981, humid conditions, and lack of interventions. The mosaic’s metallic structure has also rusted.
Luan Malltezi, the director of the National Museum of History, says that after a project identified the damage to the mosaic no concrete action has been taken to intervene for its repair.
Arber Kadia, the director of Tirana’s Regional Directorate of Monuments of Culture says there is a concrete project foreseeing restoration intervention in the mosaic which could be implemented this year.
The Forum for the Protection of Cultural Heritage blames the mosaic’s degradation over indifference by state institutions. “If few days ago, the culture minister said the St. Valsh church was damaged by perpetrators and not by indifference, today the fact is the mosaic is collapsing because of indifference, there are no robbers but complete indifference by the state,” says Artan Shkreli, a forum member. Several frescoes by a master painter were vandalised and some of their parts stolen from a 16th-century Orthodox church in central Albania earlier this month.
Back in early 2011, Albanian and foreign specialists concluded that the giant mosaic featured in the central facade of the National Museum of History in Tirana is seriously endangered and can survive up to a maximum of another 30 years despite the restoration it will undergo. After several months of identifying the damage to mosaic, restoration specialists said the mosaic has undergone tremendous irreparable degradation during its 30-year existence. Specialists said the material used to create the mosaic has been severely damaged and the steel grid corroded, making its intervention extremely difficult.
A proposal to remove the 440 square-meter mosaic because of its communist elements two years ago sparked heated debate and the idea was finally rejected.
The museum facade displays the largest mosaic in the country, known as Albania.
This impressive large mosaic on the facade of the National Museum shows ancient Illyrians, Albanian nationalists and anti-Axis guerillas fighting for Albanian freedom. The communist red star in the centre was removed in 1994, three years after the collapse of the communist regime. Albania’s history from the mid-Paleolithic to the present time can be seen in the National History Museum, the largest in Albania.
The museum was inaugurated in 1981. It has various sections, such as the Middle Ages, the National Revival, the Independence period, the World Wars, as well as areas devoted to antiquity, dictatorship, ethnography and iconography.
