Tirana County – From small village to Albania's capital region
People have lived in the Tirana area since the Paleolithic, some 10,000 to 30,000 years ago, as tools from Mount Dajt and the Cave of Pëllumbas show. The oldest find in the city centre is a Roman house from the 3rd century AD that later became a church with mosaic floors. Emperor Justinian built a castle here around 520 AD, restored in the 18th century by Ahmed Pasha Toptani. For a long time the area was modest – in 1510 Marin Barleti, biographer of Skanderbeg, described it as a small village. In 1920 Tirana became Albania's capital. Today the county is the most populous in the country, with about 760,000 inhabitants. Do you know more stories from Tirana County? Share them here in Local History!