TIRANA, Jan. 20 – The Albanian Development Fund recently announced the Spanish-Albanian joint venture “Proskene Conservation & Cultural Heritage” & “Cultural Heritage without Borders” as the winner of the tender on the reconstruction of the Gjirokastra Castle, with a contract value of around 257 thousand euros. The work of the joint venture will consist in the identification and development of primary measures to address urgent security concerns and prevention of the loss of heritage structures in the Gjirokastra Castle. However, the full duration of the development process has not been disclosed yet.
According to the ADF announcement, nine companies participated in the competition, of which three fulfilled the conditions of the bid; the Spanish- Albanian joint venture was able to win over the Italian-Albanian joint venture, ‘Mediterranea Engineering’ s.r.l. & ‘SAB’ s.r.l. & ‘Illyrian Consulting Engineers’ sh.p.k. and the Italian-Bulgarian joint venture ‘Planarch’ & ‘Project Planning & Management’.
During the past few years, ‘CHwB Albania’ has expanded its work outside of Gjirokastra, with an emergency conservation intervention at the Church of St. Nicholas in Voskopoja in 2013 and the full restoration of the hamam in Kruja, finalized in 2015, and ongoing work with the former political prison and forced labor camp at Spaç. In June 2015, CHwB Albania was officially registered as an independent local NGO. On the other hand, ‘Proskene Conservation & Cultural Heritage’ has managed heritage conservation projects mainly in Spain so far, including monuments such as the ‘Lope de Vega Theatre’, ‘San Andrés Church’, ‘Toledo Wall and many more.
Investment plans in the reconstruction of the Gjirokastra Castle are part of the ‘Integrated Urban and Tourism Development in Albania’ project funded by the World Bank Group. The project aims to play a key role in demonstrating the positive impact that the integrated approach has on regional development and the opportunities it creates for addressing a range of objectives that are part of the National Territorial Development Strategy.
At a cost of 63.8 million euros, the project’s objectives include the increase in the value of tourist assets and the strengthening of institutional capacity to support the development of socio-economic aspects related to tourism which will be put into practice mainly for the cities of Berat, Gjirokastra, Përmet and Saranda, but will also include other distinguished tourist destinations in South Albania.
