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Vlora

 



Photos by Akile Papaj


Vlora is a port and naval base, the centre of the Liab (Lab that comes from Labeates who founded Shkodra city at the beginning of the last millennium BC) region and, with Fier, the administrative centre of the oil and bitumen industry. Sazan island, in the Bay of Vlora, is the military base of important defence installations. In Vlora there are many interesting ancient sites, some of which have been excavated. In the early Middle Ages it was an important Byzantine city, and the hub of the Emperor's Adriatic Sea defence system.

In antiquity, Vlora was known as Aulon, a name given by early Greek settlers. In the Middle Ages it was often called Avlonya. It is mentioned by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD and it became an early Christian centre.

In 1258 Vlora was taken by the Norman Manfred of Sicily, and used as a base for his attacks on the Byzantine Empire. From 1266-1372 it was held by Charles of Anjou, but was then recovered for Byzantium by Emperor Andronicus II. In 1345 was taken by the Serbian Tsar Stefan Dushan, then by the Balsha feudal lord who eventually sold it with most of southern Albania to Venice in 1417. It was soon taken by the Ottoman Turks but was recovered by Venice in 1504 and again in 1690. It was an early centre of Jewish settlement in Albania, with 609 Jewish households existing in 1519-1520, mostly refugees from Spain. Vlora was taken by Ali Pasha in 1812 and became a flourishing commercial centre.


Independenca

On 28 November 1912 Ismail Qemali, a local Bey (or Turkish governor), proclaimed an independent Albania in the city following the Congress of Vlora, and so it became the seat of the first independent Albanian government.

Under the secret Treaty of London in 1915, Italy was given Vlora including the important military stronghold of Sazan island, then known as Saseno island. In the Spring of 1924, forces opposed to King Zog set up a revolutionary headquarters in Vlora after the assassination of Avni Rustemi. The town grew in the inter-war period and likeDurrės, benefited economically from King Zog's projects to improve water supply and sanitation. In 1939 it had about 70,000 inhabitans, two-thirds of them Muslim. In the Second World War it was an Axis naval base and was afterwards proclaimed a 'Hero City' for its outstanding contribution to the Partisan resistance movement against the Italian and German occupiers.


Hoxha-era apartment blocks - Photo by Akile Papaj

Under communism the port was leased to the Soviet Union as a submarine base, and played an Important part in the conflict between Enver Hoxha and Krushchev in 1960-1961, as the Soviet Union had made considerable investments in the naval facilities here and objected strongly to the loss of them as a consequence of Albania denouncing the USSR as 'revisionist' and taking the Chinese side in the split in the world communist movement. The Soviet Union threatened to occupy Vlora with Soviet troops in April 1961, and cut off all Soviet economic, military and technical aid to Albania. The threat was not carried out, as a result of the simultaneous development of the Cuban missle crisis, but Hoxha realised how vulnerable Albania was, and, after the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, he built the tens of thousands of ubiquitous concrete bunkers that still litter the entire Albanian landscape. Under Hoxha Vlora was an important recruiting centre for the Sigurimi, the secret police.

Vlora has grown in importance as an agricultural centre with very large-scale planting of olive and fruit trees, and as a centre of the food processing, oil and bitumen export industries. It is a pleasant place to relax, to have a coffee and admire the beautiful view over the Bay of Vlora

 



 


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