Old Tirana: the square, the castle and the bazaar, the back story

About Old Tirana: the square, the castle and the bazaar, the back story

By the ULTIMATE Tirana Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

The heart of old Tirana lies between Skanderbeg Square, the castle walls on Murat Toptani Street and the New Bazaar. Ottoman mosques and tombs, Italian ministries, communist palaces and bright new façades sit side by side. Here is how they fit together, and how to explore them on foot.

A market town

Tirana grew up where the roads from the coast and the mountains crossed, around a castle whose walls date back before 1300 and a busy Ottoman bazaar. Its mosques and tombs recall that period: the Et’hem Bey Mosque, finished in the early 19th century with the Clock Tower beside it, and the Kapllan Pasha Tomb of 1817, the last survivor of the cemetery of the city’s first mosque, destroyed in the Second World War.

A capital is planned

When Tirana became the capital in 1920, Italian architects drew up a new city: Armando Brasini’s plan of 1925, continued by Florestano Di Fausto and updated by Gherardo Bosio in 1939, gave it the grand square and the ministries you see today. In 1931 a new market, the Pazari i Ri, was built east of the centre, and under communism the old bazaar on the square was demolished for the Palace of Culture.

Tirana was a small market town of mosques, bazaars and gardens long before it became a capital in 1920.

The old town today

The castle courtyard reopened in 2018 as a small bazaar of restaurants and craft shops; the New Bazaar was rebuilt in 2017 with colourful façades; Skanderbeg Square became a pedestrian space the same year. Bunk’Art 2, the Tanners’ Bridge and the new Great Mosque are all a short walk apart.

Our advice: start early on the square, visit the mosque and Bunk’Art 2, walk the castle walls, and finish at the New Bazaar for lunch, coming back in the evening when the square glows.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Old Tirana: the square, the castle and the bazaar, the back story before you go.