Continuing on Day 6, we travelled to the Monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos in Ardenica, or just Ardenica Monastery, an Albanian Orthodox monastery. Built in 1282,
after the victory against the Angevins in the siege of Berat, the monastery is famous as the place where Albanian national hero Skanderbeg married Andronika Arianiti in 1451.
inside The Church of Saint Mary, which has numerous frescoes still in good shape.
In 1780, the Monastery started a theological school to prepare clerics in Greek Orthodoxy. It had an extensive library with 32,000 volumes, which was destroyed by a fire in 1932.
Of course the communists shut it down in the 1970's, choosing to turn it into a restaurant. After lunch nearby with excellent views, and excellent food and prices,
the group drove back to Tiranė.
After settling into our hotel, the group took a walk around central Tiranė, landing at the Bunker Museum, called Bunk'Art2 (BunkArt1 is more convential and quite a bit outside
the city centre). In a large underground bunker, the museum shows what happened during the communist era, 1945-1991, with photographs of soldiers fighting the fascists,
various Albanian people, secret police, wiretaps and Hoxha putting a fake face of the nation to Albanian citizens and to the outside world. There were objects of torture and
surveillance, and lists of activists and political prisoners who were disappeared, and who died in communist prison camps, in conditions rivalling the Nazis.
After that, we visited
the Et'hem Bej Mosque, built in 1793 by the Ottomans, and one that escaped destruction or defacement by the communists. The walls are totally covered by rare, pretty stunning
19th-century frescoes of natural landscapes. The mosque is beside Skanderbej Square, named after the Albanian national hero, which displays a large monument of him on a horse.
A focal point in the city, around the square are such buildings as the Tirana International Hotel, the Palace of Culture, the National Opera, the National Library,
the Bank of Albania, the Clock Tower, the City Hall, the Ministries of Infrastructure, of Agriculture, of Economy, and of Energy. The National Historical Museum there features
a quite beautiful and massive tile mosaic on the top of the front wall showing Albanian history ... about 2/3 depicts images of the communist era, the other 1/3 all the
rest of Albanian history.
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Above: Ardenica Monastery, high on a hill and built in 1282.
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