A memorial to Albania’s late dictator gets a new lease of life

FOR YEARS it has been an eyesore. Stripped of its marble facing and defaced with graffiti, Tirana’s pyramid was falling down. Now workmen are busily clambering about on top of it, as work has begun on restoring the Albanian capital’s most unusual building. Completed in 1988, the same year as I.M. Pei’s Paris pyramid, Tirana’s shabbier version is getting a new lease of life.The building was put up as a museum and memorial to Enver Hoxha, Albania’s Stalinist dictator, who died in 1985. It was designed by his daughter and her husband, who said their inspiration was the mountain that rises above the city. Its real significance was obvious to everyone. Mr Hoxha had been Albania’s pharaoh and he would be remembered for thousands of years. In private, Albanians grumbled. They were poor, a pyramid seemed rather extravagant and besides, Hoxha was a mass-murdering monster. When communism collapsed in Albania in 1991, the memorial-cum-museum was promptly closed.