Enver Hoxha The Iron Fist of Albania
Enver Hoxha: The Iron Fist of Albania tells the extraordinary story of how one man held an entire country hostage for 40 years – and got away with it. Between 1944 and 1985, the small Balkan nation of Albania was ruled by a strange, sociopathic and, frankly, completely mad dictator by the name of Enver Hoxha. […]
Bunkers in Albania
In many former Eastern Bloc countries, wrecking balls and social progress took out hulking Communist buildings and militaristic Cold War structures after the Berlin Wall fell. In Tirana, the mountain-framed capital city of Albania, the government and local artists have chosen more vibrant and unusual ways to blaze their way out of years of dictatorship and […]
Canun of lek dukagjini
The Kanun or formally the Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit (English: The Code of Lekë Dukagjini) is a set of laws developed by Lekë Dukagjini and used mostly in northern Albania and Kosovo from the 15th century until the 20th century and revived recently after the fall of the communist regime in the early 1990s. This set of laws was customary, passed down through generations, and not codified and written down until the 19th century […]
Sworn virgin
Only a dozen “sworn virgins” are left in the world, as an ancient Balkan tradition where women live as men dies out. “Albania was a man’s world, the only way to survive was to become one,” says Gjystina Grishaj. As a 23-year-old woman living in the mountains of northern Albania, she made a decision that […]