Who ruled Tirana?

Tirana lies on a fertile plain in central Albania, ringed by hills and overlooked from the east by Mount Dajti, about 30 kilometres inland from the Adriatic port of Durrës. Roads from the coast to the interior and from north to south Albania crossed here, but for most of history the area held only villages and castles. Tirana is one of Europe's youngest capitals: it was founded as an Ottoman market town in 1614 and chosen as the country's capital only in 1920. Its modern shape reflects three twentieth-century projects in quick succession, Italian-planned avenues, communist rule under Enver Hoxha, and the rapid, sometimes chaotic growth that followed.

People have lived in the district since the Palaeolithic, and in antiquity the plain lay in the territory of the Illyrian Taulantii. Under the Roman Empire the main city of the region was Dyrrachium (Durrës) on the coast, and the Via Egnatia passed to the south; Roman-era remains, including a villa and later a church, have been found within Tirana itself. In the Middle Ages the area was contested by the Byzantine Empire, Bulgarian rulers, Serbian kings and local Albanian lords, with fortresses at Petrelë and Prezë nearby. By the fifteenth century it was within the Ottoman Empire, apart from the years of resistance led by Skanderbeg.

In 1614 a local Ottoman Albanian notable, Sulejman Pasha Bargjini, built a mosque, a bakery, a bathhouse and a few shops at the site, which the city treats as its founding, though a small market and mills seem to have existed before. The town grew slowly as a regional bazaar. The Et'hem Bey Mosque, with its painted interior, was completed in the early nineteenth century, and the clock tower beside it dates from about the same time.

Albania declared independence from the Ottoman Empire at Vlorë on 28 November 1912. After years of war and foreign occupation, the Congress of Lushnjë in 1920 chose Tirana as the temporary capital, a compromise site in the centre of the country, and it was confirmed as capital in 1925. Ahmet Zogu, who ruled as president and then as King Zog from 1928, invited Italian architects to design a new centre, with ministries ranged around Skanderbeg Square and a monumental boulevard running south. Italy invaded in April 1939, and German forces occupied the country from 1943; communist-led partisans took Tirana on 17 November 1944.

Under Enver Hoxha the old bazaar and much of the Ottoman town were demolished to make way for Soviet-style buildings, and Albania became one of the most isolated states in Europe. Private cars were almost unknown, and thousands of concrete bunkers were built around the city. After Hoxha's death in 1985, student protests in Tirana in 1990 and 1991 helped bring down one-party rule, and his statue on Skanderbeg Square was pulled down in February 1991. Since then migrants from across the country have greatly enlarged the city, and in the 2000s the mayor Edi Rama had drab apartment blocks painted in bright colours. Tirana has about 600,000 people in its municipality, roughly a quarter of Albania's population, and is the country's political and economic centre.