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Albania's communist pyramid at last has a point
Built as a bizarre memorial to Albania's paranoid communist dictator, now a brutalist pyramid hopes to become a beacon of the Balkan country's transformation.
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This aerial photograph shows the Pyramid of Tirana, in Tirana, on May 24, 2023. (AFP/Adnan Beci)
It was built as a bizarre memorial to Albania's paranoid communist dictator who cut the country off from the rest of the world.
Now a brutalist pyramid in the heart of Tirana hopes to become a beacon of the Balkan country's transformation.
The behemoth fit for a pharaoh was designed by Enver Hoxha's daughter as a museum to his memory just a few years after his death in 1985.
Inside the grey pyramid sat a huge gleaming statue of the "Great Teacher", who ruled the hermetically sealed country for four decades.
Now it is being turned into a hub to boost the country's embryonic tech sector.
"What used to serve to glorify an individual has been completely overturned, it's becoming a place designed to educate people, not dedicated to one person but to thousands," said Martin Mata, co-president of the Albanian-American Development Foundation (AADF), one of the project's major stakeholders.
The 15-million-euro project co-financed by the AADF and Albanian authorities will house an education centre to train youngsters in all things digital in an after-school programme that aims to attract 4,000 students a week.
