The symbolism of the newly renovated Pyramid in Tirana, Albania, might at first seem straightforward. Unveiled in mid-October, just as leaders of the European Union’s largest nations arrived in the city to discuss when Albania and other Balkan states might become members of that organization, Tirana’s youthful mayor, Erion Veliaj, declared that the revamped Communist-era monument, formerly “a house of oppression and dictatorship,” is now “a house of freedom.”
The history of the Pyramid, however, is far from simple. Called “Piramida” by locals, the building was originally completed in 1988 as a memorial to Albania’s longtime dictator, Enver Hoxha. The 70-foot-tall structure, part shrine, part Constructivist sculpture, is not technically a pyramid. It is generally circular in plan, reading from the rear as a ribbed drum. But from the front, with a portico formed from splayed diagonal concrete beams supporting steeply inclined triangular planes of stone cladding, it is legibly pharaonic—a primitive image of power, expressive of Hoxha’s domination of all political and social life in Albania during his four-decade regime. After the fall of Communism in 1991, the statue of Hoxha it had contained was demolished, and the building was used variously as an impromptu exhibition space, a nightclub, a radio station, and even a NATO base. But nothing stuck. Lacking any long-term purpose, the structure slowly decayed: it was frequently vandalized, the glazing broken, and the concrete began to deteriorate. The building was taken over by the homeless.
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