Justinian Fortress

The Fortress of Justinian — Kalaja e Justinianit, or simply Kalaja e Tiranës — is a Byzantine-era remnant whose history reaches back before 1300, standing at the point where the main east-west and north-south roads crossed and formed the heart of Tirana. In the Albanian tradition the site began as a road station of the mansio-mutatio type on the line of the Via Egnatia, the centre of a settlement recorded under a shifting series of names: Tirkan in the fourth century, Tergiana in 1297, when the chancellery of Charles I of Anjou was installed there, and in its modern form Tyranna in 1505, in Barleti. The toponym has still not been fully settled.

Every one of the old roads was dominated by a fort before it reached Tirana. Kalaja e Lalmit, of the second century, sat on the rise where the Erzen took its bend and let the road through towards Petrela; Kalaja e Tujanit, a quadrangular stone work with traces of occupation from the first Iron Age and rebuilt in the fourth century, was the entry gate of the Dibër-Tiranë-Durrës corridor. By the Krrabë narrows near Mount Vila stood Persqopi, an Illyrian town of the Parthini of the fourth to third centuries BC, whose people later moved to Petrela. With Dorëz, Ndroq, Preza and Ishëm, these ancient and medieval castles made up the defensive ring of Tirana, and the castle in the middle of it remained the historic nucleus of the district and its administrative residence through the central Middle Ages.

By the seventeenth century the town had spread around the walls: the külliye of Sulejman Pasha as its civic centre, the craftsmen's and traders' bazaar on the northern side, the Namazgja and the Tanners' Bridge to the east, and the governors' buildings inside the castle ground itself. On its other two sides the fortress rose above the banks of the Lana. Reconstruction of the enclosing walls in 1640 is attributed to Ahmet Bey, who is thought to have raised them in height above the ancient structures; the tall tower is credited to him as well, and still stands, partly in good condition.

The castle was damaged again in the inter-feudal wars of the eighteenth century, when the troops of Ahmet Kurt Pasha of Berat clashed there with the Bushatlli. The people of Tirana shut themselves inside and defended it, and neither side took the place. The system of loopholes for firearms along the upper part of the enclosing walls dates from this period. After 1814 the fortress became the residence of the Toptani, who had come from Kruja and who built two houses within it, one to live in and one for receiving guests, both of which survive.

Through the twentieth century, once its defensive function was gone, the fortress took its heaviest damage: it lost a stretch of the enclosing walls, and the remains barely allow its full stylistic form to be read. Almost all that stands above ground is a six-metre Ottoman-era wall covered in vines, while foundations uncovered more recently were built into the pedestrianised Murat Toptani Street. Three towers of the fortification are known.

The Castle of Tirana was declared a monument of culture of the first category on 10 June 1973, and the newly traced lines of its walls were declared a cultural monument on 15 May 2008. Building both with and without permits has nonetheless continued to accumulate around it and in the protected green zone. The ground it encloses carries the Academy of Sciences, the Assembly and the National Gallery of Arts; restoration for tourism has been under way, restaurants, hotels and cultural institutions occupy the buildings inside the walls, and a traditional bazaar of craft stalls and cookshops opened there in December 2018.