Skip to main content

Ardenica

Last Sunday we took a trip with some friends to Apollonia and Ardenica. It was a beautiful day - warm and sunny with a clear blue sky. At Ardenica we visited the Orthodox monastery. The church that stands at the centre of the monastery complex dates from the 18th century, though there has been a monastery on this site since the 13th Century.

This was one of the few major religious sites in Albania to survive the anti-religious onslaught of the communists. It was, instead, confiscated from the church and used as a tourist resort. The monastery was returned to the church after the end of the communist regime.

We visited Ardenica in the late afternoon with a beautiful warming light shining on the buildings. There are some more pictures of the monastery on Flickr. Photographs from Apollonia are still to come.









Comments

Adela_Radu said…
You take really great pictures! Ardenica looks beautiful, it is in the list of places to visit, maybe this summer. Do they use the church for regular services?
7:24 pm
bryan-in-greece said…
More stunning photos! I visited Kastoria in November last year and took some shots and while I realise it is not actually in Albania, it is very close to the Greek-Albanian border, so I thought I'd give you a link to that...!

Pictures of Lake Kastoria

Bryan
2:14 pm
olli said…
The church is definitely in use - there are a number of monks at the monastery. I'm not sure if it is used for regular services though.

When you are next in Tirana let me know if you would like to meet up.

Bryan, thanks for the comments and the link. We stopped off in Kastoria briefly on our last visit to Thessaloniki, though it was a wet and grey day. It looks beautiful in the sunlight.

I was also interested in your animal welfare site. We are trying to set up a charity in Tirana to look after the strays here - mainly the dogs.

The municipality here has also killed the dogs in a very brutal way, though they are now more supportive of a more humane approach.
6:57 pm
bryan-in-greece said…
I wish we could say the same of our local municipal authority, Alwyn! - Bryan
7:30 pm
Adela_Radu said…
Thank you for the explanation. We would definitely like to meet with you when we come to Tirana this year.

In September last year, you posted some pictures from the mask factory in Shkodra. I have heard about it only recently, and would love to read some more information since there is no source on the web to talk about it. Is it open for all visitors? Are the masks for sale?
3:49 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.
34 comments
Read more

Kamëz Part 3

For those who want a lengthy detailed report into the election there will, undoubtedly, be a range of them to chose from. In the meantime, here are my brief reflections on the last few weeks. At the heart of the problems around this election is the unwarranted influence of political parties on all aspects of the electoral process. Every institution responsible for organising and facilitating the election is under the control of political parties. The Electoral Code itself was heavily revised only days before the original date for the elections and only weeks before the actual date (Law 9676 13 January 2007). It was these revisions, specifically Article 181/2, that created the overly complicated identification requirements that caused so much confusion, and undoubtedly disenfranchised some voters. Let's be clear though: these revisions were not designed to protect the interests of the electorate. They were drafted primarily because the political parties do not trust each other. The ...
27 comments
Read more

Big in Albania

Ask me how much I knew about Albania before coming here and my list would be a short one: Enver Hoxha, bunkers and Sir Norman Wisdom. I have no idea when or how I acquired this extensive body of knowledge, but the association of Norman Wisdom with Albania was by far the most interesting part of it. I remember watching Norman Wisdom's old films on British television. My parents were fans of his wholesome, slapstick comedy, but apparently missed the ideological significance of Pitkin's relationship with Mr Grimsdale. Pitkin, the downtrodden and oppressed representative of the workers, triumphed every time over his capitalist oppressor, Mr Grimsdale - and he got the girl. It took a theorist of Hoxha's insight and profundity to discern this deeper political message. It always seemed tremendously unlikely, yet the story of Sir Norman's fame in Albania has been reported in worthy sources like the BBC , the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph . According to the Guardian, when Wi...
22 comments
Read more