Bizarre Communist Folly to Be Reborn as Albanian Education Center
Pyramid of Tirana is reminder of Albania’s totalitarian past
Photographer: Gent Shkullaku/AFP via Getty Images
It looks like a fantastical skate park or an abandoned modernist shopping mall, with its huge sloped concrete surfaces defaced by graffiti and its grimy glass panels, but this decaying edifice is one of Europe’s most important surviving monuments to communism and it’s about to undergo a transformation.
The Pyramid of Tirana was erected to celebrate the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha immediately after his death in 1985. It took three years to build on the city’s main boulevard and opened with much ceremony in October 1988. It was the creation of four architects: Hoxha’s daughter, Pranvera Hoxha, her husband Klement Kolaneci, plus Pirro Vaso and Vladimir Bregu, according to InfoAlbania.