Surveillance cameras suggested for endangered churches

TIRANA, Jan. 31 – One month after the irreparable damage made to the medieval frescos by some robbers in an Orthodox church in central Albanian district of Elbasan, culture authorities plan to install surveillance cameras to preserve the national heritage. The Institute of Monuments of Culture says it has initiated a project to install 35 surveillance cameras in remote churches in Korca, Lushnja, Saranda, Elbasan which are home to paintings by renowned medieval painters Onufri, Kostandin Shpataraku etc.
Apollon Bace, the head of the Institute of Monuments of Culture, says the surveillance system project costs USD 100,000 and that efforts with donors and government are being made to implement it as soon as possible.
Several frescoes by a master painter were vandalised and some of their parts stolen from a 16th-century Orthodox church in central Albania last January.
Most of the frescoes at the small church in southeastern Elbasan County were the work of Onufri, a painter of the 1500s considered to be Albania’s Michelangelo for his work on Orthodox churches in central and southern Albania. The thieves used an ax-like tool to go after the heads of the saints in the frescoes, leaving behind the bare walls. Many of these parts were taken — likely for illegal sale — and some were left destroyed because they had crumbled on the floor.