SKANDERBEG SQUARE

Located in the heart of Tirana, this pedestrian square (Sheshi Skënderbej) is the largest in Albania, covering an area of 40,000^m2. Surrounded by heterogeneous buildings in Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Fascist, Soviet and contemporary styles, it bears the name of national hero Georges Kastriot Skanderbeg, whose statue is enthroned in the center. Not very pleasant, but a must-see, it was designed by the Austro-Hungarians during the First World War. However, it owes its present form to Florestano Di Fausto (1890-1965), an Italian architect who worked mainly in Mussolini's colonies in the 1930s. He had a series of neoclassical buildings erected here. Later, the communist government demolished the old Ottoman charchia (commercial and Islamic center) and the Orthodox cathedral, which dated from 1870, to make way for new buildings. The area around the square is now being transformed, with tall towers springing up everywhere. But, as planned by Italian urban planners, the esplanade remains at the intersection of the city's two major north-south axes: the boulevard ^Zog-Ier (Bulevardi Zogu I), which runs northwards, and the boulevard des Martyrs-de-la-Nation (Bulevardi Dëshmorët e Kombit), which runs southwards across the Lana towards Blloku and the Grand Parc.

Around the square. To the south, the square is dominated by the mosaic facade of the National History Museum (behind which stands the municipal tourist office in rue Ded-Gjo-Luli). To the east stand the InterContinental Hotel (erected in 1979 and featuring a 135 m-high tower since 2023), the Palace of Culture (1963) and the old Et'hem Bey mosque (with the clock tower just behind it). To the south-west of the square are the headquarters of the Bank of Albania (1938), the Puppet Theatre (a former Austrian villa dating from 1916) and the Ministry of Tourism and Environment, a colorful neoclassical building designed by Florestano Di Fausto. The northern part of the square will soon be framed by two towers, each 205 m high: the Bofill Tower (designed by the great Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill) to the west, and the Mount Tirana Tower (by Danish architects CEBRA) to the east. In the eastern part, near the Et'hem Bey mosque, major changes have already taken place: the opening of Bunk'Art 2 in 2017, the much-contested destruction of the National Theatre in 2020, the completion of the Book Building (77 m high) in 2022 and the Plaza Tirana hotel (85 m high) in 2016.