Lapidars and Socialist Monuments as Elements of Albania's Historic Cultural Landscapes

Once, while buying olives at Tirana’s Pazar i Ri (New Market), I discerned an abstract shape behind the sellers (als–2). “What is this?” a friend who was visiting from Germany asked me. After I tried to explain him briefly what a “lapidar” is, my friend wanted to take a picture of it. The surrounding sellers’ faces clearly expressed in-comprehension about why a foreigner would care about this concrete structure, against which they used to stack up their cardboard boxes and fruit trays. A little later, on the way to Krujë, we again encountered several of those strange sculptures and obelisks of different sizes, shapes, and forms, dominating the Albanian landscape that passed by our bus window. Some of them were in bad shape (e.g., als–596) another one had been recently transformed into a stele covered with smiling, ghost-like faces (als–594). “Why are they in such different condi-tions if they are all from the communist period?” was my friend’s legitimate question.