Architectural Guide Tirana

The architecture of Tirana, the capital of Albania, is on show
for the first time in this international guide as a collection of
100 buildings that represent the construction of the city in the
modern period, soon after the declaration of independence
from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. The twentieth century has
been a period of many vicissitudes for Albanians, from a relatively
unstable period of nationalist government transformed
into a monarchy, to the Second World War and the annihilation
of the previous elite, right through to the rise to power of the
revolutionary communist regime. Today the city is a special fusion
of parts from the Ottoman architecture, the bourgeois architecture
of the early twentieth century, fascist totalitarianism,
and socialist realism within a post-socialist and contemporary
architectural framework that is gaining more and more priority
as a result of a renovation policy that seeks to promote economic
development and Western integration through the use
of architectural tools and the design of public spaces.
Tirana Architectural Guide is put together as a practical and
vivid way of communicating with the reader. Whether they be
architects or simply city lovers, the architectonic collection will
accompany them in an exotic Byronic journey through the heart
of a vivid Mediterranean city that has recently become a tourist
landmark. The book is organised in seven chapters that match
the main street areas included in the radial city morphology.