If you decide to walk past the home of Albania‘s former communist dictator Enver Hoxha in the center of Tirana, you might not even know where you are. There is no plaque marking its historical significance. The two-story residence, modest by the dictator’s standards, looks as if it has been reconstructed rather than preserved. The home was only briefly opened to the public in 2018. and since then few have been inside, reports CNN, quoted by economic.bg.
The current state of Hoxha’s residence sums up the feelings of many Albanians towards the communist years. Having suffered the collective trauma of cruelty, many would prefer to forget it ever existed.
During the height of communist rule, the notoriously paranoid and isolationist Hoxha closed Albania’s borders, shot those who tried to leave and built enough bunkers to house every family in the country. His regime’s distrust of communist allies, use of state surveillance, and Stalinist-style brutality earned Albania the unflattering nickname “Europe’s North Korea.”
Communist rule ended in 1990. and Albania inherited a total of 221,143 bunkers and military sites that for decades served as solemn reminders of darker days – until recently.
A second life for bunkers
Today, Albania is experiencing a tourism renaissance, fueled by entrepreneurs and returning expatriates, who are giving a second life to communist military structures once used to store weapons of war.
To restore their history and take back the traditions that were once stolen from them, Albanians are turning bunkers and former military barracks into restaurants, art museums, guesthouses.
Although Albania is still picking up the pieces from the aftermath of the communist era, it’s clear that residents are determined not to let their country’s dark past define them.
Drive 16 minutes up the mountainous hills outside Tirana and you’ll find yourself at Kazerma e Cerenit, a former military barracks and complex turned into one of the city’s newest restaurants and agritourism destinations.
It’s the brainchild of Ismet Shehu, a UK-trained Albanian chef who once served lunch to the late Queen Elizabeth II. He has returned home to build a growing empire of restaurants, his latest project being Kazerma.
What is now a two-story dining room was once a spartan garage for military trucks. It is almost unrecognizable from its previous incarnation, except for the original iron rails supporting the wooden roof and the punched holes in the brickwork, which have been left untouched.
In the spirit of the soldiers who were once stationed here, Shehu maintains a military canteen, serving guests traditional Albanian dhallë (buttermilk) in aluminum cups and using trays and pans from military field kits to serve his meals.
The waiters dress in military uniforms, sometimes with a red scarf of the Communist Party.
My staff are dressed like soldiers,” says Shehu, “and they do their duty with a smile – and sometimes with fake weapons.”
At the end of the evening, the bill is brought to the customers in a fake grenade.
A few steps away from the Ottoman-era Et’hem Bey Mosque in Tirana’s central Skanderbeg Square is another poignant military bunker from the Hoxha era. Bunk’Art 2 is the country’s most important museum cataloging the atrocities committed during Albania’s communist rule, and is housed in a preserved nuclear-grade bunker that once housed political offices of the central government.
The domed entrance to the underground bunker serves as a somber notice of what is to come.
All 360 degrees of the interior of the gray dome are covered with photographs commemorating the victims killed at the behest of a leader who was so paranoid and cruel that the mere knowledge of him could have put lives at risk.
“We have been compared to North Korea because the government has created a cult of personality, telling us they are gods and we should worship them, creating a border control system and killing anyone who tries to escape or enter the country.”
Deep in the nuclear bomb-proof tunnels, exhibitions explain what happened here all those years when Albania was cut off from the world.
Down the street, in the center of Gjirokaster, 65-year-old Manushake Juli has built a private collection of Albanian antiquities in a narrow bunker. It includes objects dating from Byzantine times to the communist years.
Step by step we have rediscovered what we lost under Communism.”
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