MAUSOLÉE DE SKANDERBEG
Mausoleum erected in 1981 housing the Catholic church in which the national hero, who died in Lezha at the age of 62, was buried.
Built in 1981, this mausoleum (Vendevarrimi i Skenderbeut) houses the tomb of national hero Gjergj Kastriot Skanderbeg, who died of malaria in Lezha on January 17, 1468 at the age of 62. For once, Albania's communist and atheist regime has made the most of a religious building. The mausoleum consists of two superimposed buildings: the walls of the former 14th-century Catholic Church of St. Nicholas have been protected since 1981 by a large colonnaded structure reminiscent of a Greek temple. It was designed by Odhise Paskali (1903-1985), who is also responsible for the statue of Skanderbeg that stands in the square of the same name in Tirana. The tomb in which the hero is buried is located in the nave of the former church. Covered by a marble slab, it is decorated with copies of the two distinctive attributes of the leader of the League of Lezha: his helmet surmounted by a goat's head and his curved sword offered by Sultan Murad II (the originals are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna). But the tomb itself no longer holds much. When Ottoman soldiers seized Lezha in 1478, they rushed to the church to seize the bones of the Albanian resistance leader. And they crushed them to make amulets of protection, for Skanderbeg was, in their eyes, endowed with supernatural strength. Skanderbeg's supernatural strength had enabled him to kill 3,000 Albanians with his own hands during his 25-year struggle against the Ottoman Empire.
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