The Pyramid of Tirana, Albania’s capital, is one of the city’s more unusual ‘tourist attractions”. Formerly known as the Enver Hoxha Museum, the building was designed by the dictator’s daughter and son-in-law and completed in the late 1980s. It’s been a convention centre, a military base for NATO, a museum and a nightclub in its time, but nowadays, it is covered in graffiti and in a sorry state of disrepair.
The Pyramid is often a source of debate, and up until now, no decision has been made on whether it should be knocked down completely or restored to its former glory.
Update; In February 2021, work commenced on the reconstruction/rehabilitation of the Pyramid of Tirana. Preserving the original form of the building, the structure will become the centrepiece of a new youth-focused cultural hub for the city, which will contain workshops, studios and classrooms alongside a handful of cafes and restaurants. The project is being overseen by Dutch architectural firm MVRDV and after completion, the Pyramid, as it will be named, will be run by the non-profit organisation TUMO Tirana which focuses on free technology and design-related education programmes for 12 to 18-year-olds.
The final photo was taken in June 2022 and shows the progress of the project so far.
Graffiti artist at work at the Pyramid of Tirana …
Oouf, that’s one ugly-ass building! I say tear it down, get rid of the cement and grow some trees there.
Frank (bbqboy)
Fair point but don’t you think it would make a good skateboard park? Imagine being 16 years old again, no fear and hurtling down the side of that thing!!
Actually, that was my 2nd thought but then I looked at that crappy broken cement and figured you couldn’t do anything with that. But yeah, I guess could all be paved over.
Would ba a great skatespot with all the stairs, curbs and ledges. Unfortunately, the pavement is really crap. So if they would pave part of the square around the pyramide this could be a skateboard video spot.
My skateboarding days are well and truly past but I see where you are coming from. Even back in the day I don’t think I would have had the nerve to skate down the side of the actual pyramid however!
Who’s that vandal in the black T-shirt and grey sweat pants adding to the graffiti? Nobody I know, I hope.
No one I know, that’s for sure. I like what he has done with the eyes on Bart Simpson.
What I remember about this building are the kids sliding down its sloping sides atop pieces of cardboard, and it looks like there is a small figure doing so on the right of the photo. And what about the thousands of concrete pillboxes that Enver Hoxha had built all over the country to repel an invasion from NATO or the Warsaw Pact or possibly Mars? They must still be scattered all over the countryside, maybe also covered with graffiti. And is there still an outdoor beer garden on Tirana’s main plaza, just in front of the mosque? You have to love a Muslim capital city with a beer garden right in front of its principal mosque. John Belushi, famous Albanian-American, would be proud.
Yep, the kids were still sliding down it. I was tempted, Kirsty not! And as for the pillboxes, you do still see them in the countryside but not so much in cities. From what I understand, they are pretty difficult to destroy, which implied they were well made in the first place (didn’t the guy who designed them famously sit inside one while it was being attacked?). I remember seeing the loads around Lake Ohrid, along the border with Macedonia. The beer garden (and the mosque!) are still there. You need to come back to Eastern and Southern Europe, you would be fascinated by the changes!
This is now:
https://piramida.edu.al/
That’s a bit of a change! 🙂 We could see the working going on when we were last in Tirana…