Tirana – Peter Geoghegan

LRB Blog: In Tirana

By peterPosted on 8th October 2013Posted in Albania, Balkans, London Review of BooksTagged Albania, Edi Rama, Ilr Meta, Tirana

The Palace of Culture in Tirana has housed Albania’s national library, opera and ballet companies for almost 50 years. Khrushchev laid the first stone, in May 1959, during what one American newsreel described as a ‘lengthy visit with mysterious overtones’. These days the ground floor of the opera is a count centre during national and local elections. […]

Polls to test turbulent Albanian democracy

By peterPosted on 8th October 2013Posted in Al Jazeera, Albania, BalkansTagged Albania, Berisha, Rama, Tirana

Tirana, Albania – Under the secretive Communist regime of Enver Hoxha, Blloku was the most restricted district in Albania. Only high-ranking apparatchiks in the ruling Party of Labour were allowed to reside in the tight grid of tree-lined streets located in the centre of the capital, Tirana. In the middle of “the Block” stood Hoxha’s own […]