On Day 7, we drove up north in Albania to Shkodėr, a city continuously inhabited since the Bronze Age. On the hill of the city is Rozafa Castle. The earliest fortification walls are
dated to the 4th-3rd century BC constituting the citadel of the Illyrian capital city of Skodra, which fell to the Romans in 168 BC when the Illyrian Kingdom collapsed. But most of the
walls and buildings are Venetian, when they gained control of the castle in 1396, and kept it until 1479. Within the castle there are the ruins of a 13th-century Venetian Catholic
church called St. Stephen's Cathedral. After the siege of Shkodėr in the 15th century, when the Ottoman Empire captured the city, the church was transformed into the Fatih Sultan
Mehmet Mosque.
After the castle, the group visited St. Stephen's Catholic Cathedral in Shkodėr, built 1858-1867. The church features paintings for each of the 14 stations of the cross, one
of Mother Teresa and one of the 38 religious people who were murdereed by the communists. Their bones, including those of the only female, Marie Tuci, who was working towards,
but hadn't become a nun yet, rest in the church. During the communist regime in 1967, it was closed and repurposed as a "Palace of Sports."
Our tour guide said he played ping pong there as a child. The bell tower was demolished in 1968 and later rebuilt in 1999. It was reconsecrated and reopened in the 1990s,
with a historic mass attended by Mother Teresa.
Our next stop was Krujė. Years ago, George W. Bush visited Albania. In a small town on his way to Krujė he stopped at a bakery. The locals loved his visit to their small town.
The onwer changed the bakery name to George W. Bush, and had a statue of him put up of him in the square beside the bakery. The owner now has four bakeries due to the fame of
that one visit. In Krujė is the National History Museum "Gjergj Kastrioti Skėnderbej" or the Skanderbeg Museum, with murals, artifacts and information about Gjergj Kastrioti
Skėnderbej (14051468). Never crowned King, but treated by his countrymen as such, he led the League of Lezhė in the Ottoman-Albanian Wars until his death, successfully defending
the country despite being consistently outnumbered by the Ottomans 3, 4 or 5 to 1, sometimes worse.
Krujė Castle, which houses the museum, is a historic citadel. Ottoman troops attacked it thrice, in 1450, 1466 and 1467, but failed to take control until a fourth siege in 1476
when Skanderbeg was already dead. It was this impregnable fortress that helped Skėnderbej (Skanderbeg) defend Albania from the Ottoman invasion for more than two decades.
The museum was designed
by many, but the co-lead was Pranvera Hoxha, daughter of communist dictator Enver Hoxha. And it's quite beautifully done, our guide said he and his countrymen agree it's pretty much
the only decent thing a Hoxha did for Albania. There is also a Turkish market in Krujė, with souvenirs and stuff for tourists, but also interesting products for locals too.
We returned home to Tiranė for dinner, packed, slept, then left in the morning for the airport and the trip home to Toronto through München.
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