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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