Becoming a Country

The Rilindja, the national awakening, ran from the League of Prizren in 1878 through the Congress of Manastir in 1908, which settled the Albanian alphabet, to the declaration of independence at Vlorë on 28 November 1912. The flag was raised there on 4 December; the two dates are often conflated. What followed was borders drawn by others at Florence in 1913, a Dutch military mission sent to build a gendarmerie, Prince Wied's six-month principality, the Congress of Lushnjë, and Ahmet Zogu as president and then king.

Part of Albania

119 moments in this segment.

1. 1878 - Members of the League of Prizren. A group of League of Prizren figures posed for the camera. Photographs of the 1878 movement are scarce, and most surviving portraits of its leaders come from studio sittings like this.
2. 1878 - The Shkodër delegation to the League of Prizren. Delegates from the sanjak of Shkodër photographed at the League of Prizren in 1878. Baca Kurti, a leader of the northern highlanders, stands second from the right.
3. 1882-03-31 - The Prizren assembly in an illustrated newspaper. An engraved view of Albanians meeting at Prizren, printed in a Serbian illustrated paper in 1882. The League drew attention across the Balkans and in the European press.
4. 1900 - Pupils of the girls' school at Korçë. The girls' school at Korçë, opened in 1891, was the first in the country to teach girls in Albanian. Its pupils and teachers were photographed around the turn of the century, when such schooling was still illegal under Ottoman law.
5. 1903 - New Year card sent to Asdreni. A postcard sent to the poet Aleksander Stavre Drenova, known as Asdreni, by a close friend around the turn of the century. Asdreni wrote the words of the Albanian anthem while living among the emigrant colonies.
6. 1905 - Thanas Floqi in 1905. Thanas Floqi, later one of the signatories of the declaration of independence at Vlore, photographed in 1905 while the Albanian national movement was still an underground affair.
7. 1908 - The cast of Sami Frashëri's Besa in Korçë. Players of Sami Frashëri's drama Besa photographed in Korçë in 1908. Staging plays in Albanian was itself a political act in the last years of Ottoman rule, when the language had no official standing.
8. 1908 - The first Albanian-language school in Kavajë. Pupils and teachers of the Albanian school at Kavajë, founded in the late 1880s and photographed in 1908. The Young Turk revolution of that year briefly allowed such schools to operate openly.
9. 1908 - The band of Qani Bey, 1908. An armed Albanian band photographed by the Manaki brothers in 1908. Groups like this operated across the Ottoman vilayets in the years when Albanian demands for schools, alphabet and autonomy were hardening into a national movement.
10. 1909 - The Band of Freedom in Korçë. The Banda e Lirisë, a wind band founded in Korçë in the years of the national awakening, photographed in 1909. Such societies carried the movement's message through concerts and public parades.
11. 1910 - Durrës harbour and the royal palace. The waterfront at Durrës with the palace on the left, the residence used by Prince Wilhelm of Wied during his short reign in 1914. Durrës was Albania's capital in the first years of independence.
12. 1910 - Mati Logoreci. The teacher and grammarian Mati Logoreci took part in the Congress of Manastir and spent his life arguing for schooling in Albanian. Photographed in the 1910s, in the decade when the language question became a national one.
13. 1910 - Xhelal Koprencka. 's declaration of independence at Vlore in November 1912. Portrait made in the 1910s.
14. 1912 - Ismail Qemali's wardrobe, Vlorë. The wardrobe of Ismail Qemali, first head of the Albanian government, kept in the Independence Museum in Vlorë. Small domestic objects like this are most of what survives of the 1912 administration.
15. 1912-11-28 - The Albanian Declaration of Independence on display. The original declaration signed at Vlorë on 28 November 1912, shown in its case at the Independence Museum. The text announced Albania's separation from the Ottoman Empire.
16. 1913 - Major Thomson and General De Veer at Durrës. The two senior Dutch officers of the mission sent to build a gendarmerie for the new Albanian state. Thomson was killed at Durrës in June 1914 during the revolt against Prince Wied.
17. 1913 - Dignitaries at Berat, 1913. Local notables and Dutch officers photographed at Berat during the Dutch Military Mission of 1913-1914, among them the prefect Fejzi Alizoti and Aziz Vrioni. The mission was sent to build a gendarmerie for the brand-new Albanian state.
18. 1913 - The military barracks at Vlore. The barracks at Vlore photographed by the Dutch officer Carel de Iongh during the mission of 1913-1914. Vlore had been the seat of Albania's provisional government since the declaration of independence in November 1912.
19. 1913 - The port building at Vlore that became the Independence Museum. Thomson photographed this building in the port of Vlore in 1913 or 1914. It now houses the Museum of Independence, commemorating the declaration made in the town on 28 November 1912.
20. 1913 - The road from Vlore down to the port. General de Veer walks with Et'hem Vlora on the road running from the centre of Vlore to its harbour, with the ruined Bektashi tekke of Kuz Baba on the hill. Photographed during the Dutch mission of 1913-1914.
21. 1913 - Colonel de Veer before leaving for Albania. The official portrait of Colonel Willem de Veer, taken in the summer of 1913 before he sailed to Albania. He commanded the Dutch mission sent to organise a gendarmerie for the new state and later acted as its effective governor.
22. 1914-02-28 - Dutch officers leave Utrecht for Albania. Lieutenant Fabius, captains Kroon, Sluis and De Waal and lieutenant Doorman board the train at Utrecht on 28 February 1914, bound for Albania to organise the new state's gendarmerie.
23. 1914-03-01 - Declaration of Northern Epirote autonomy at Gjirokaster. The provisional government of the self-declared Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus announces its autonomy at Gjirokaster on 1 March 1914, after the Great Powers assigned the district to Albania. The republic lasted a matter of months.
24. 1914-03-07 - Prince Wilhelm and Princess Sophie arrive in Albania. Wilhelm of Wied and his wife Sophie of Schoenburg-Waldenburg step ashore at Durres on 7 March 1914 to take up the throne offered by the Great Powers. Their reign lasted barely six months.
25. 1914-05-23 - Prince Wilhelm of Wied boards a launch to leave Durrës. On 23 May 1914 Prince Wilhelm of Wied, assisted by Admiral Eugenio Trifari, takes a launch out to an Italian warship as the rebellion reached Durrës. He returned briefly, then left Albania for good that September.
26. 1914 - International Control Commission negotiating with Epirote delegates. Members of the International Control Commission meeting delegates from the Greek-speaking districts of southern Albania in 1914. The talks produced the Protocol of Corfu, which promised local autonomy inside Albania's new borders.
27. 1914 - Girls dancing at Durres, 1914. Girls dancing at Durres around April 1914, from the photographic diary of the Marquis di San Giuliano. The town was the capital of Albania during the six months of Prince Wied's reign.
28. 1914 - Waiting for Prince Wied at Durres. Crowds gather at Durres in March 1914 to await Wilhelm of Wied, the German prince the Great Powers had chosen as Albania's sovereign. He landed on 7 March and left the country on 3 September.
29. 1914 - Military band at the Italian consulate, Durres. A military band plays in front of the Italian consulate at Durres in March 1914. Italy and Austria-Hungary competed for influence over the new principality from the day it was created.
30. 1914 - Essad Pasha Toptani and dignitaries at Durres. Essad Pasha Toptani in uniform with other dignitaries at Durres in March 1914. Within weeks he was arrested for plotting against Prince Wied; he later ran his own government at Durres during the war.
31. 1914 - Princess Sophie zu Wied and her children at Durres. Princess Sophie zu Wied with her children at Durres in the spring of 1914. The family arrived in March and sailed away in September as revolt spread and the war closed in.
32. 1914 - Princess Sophie zu Wied among children in Durrës. Princess Sophie zu Wied, wife of Prince Wilhelm, greets children in Durrës in the spring of 1914. The Marquis di San Giuliano collection documents the six months when a German prince ruled Albania from the port town.
33. 1914 - Mosque and Austro-Hungarian legation, Durrës. A mosque stands beside the konak in Durrës, with the Austro-Hungarian legation visible in the distance, spring 1914. The capital of Prince Wilhelm of Wied was still an Ottoman-built port town.
34. 1914 - Italian sailors guarding the konak in Durrës. Italian sailors stand watch outside the konak, the Durrës residence of Prince Wilhelm of Wied, in the spring of 1914. Foreign landing parties held the town while the countryside slipped out of the prince's control.
35. 1914 - Hauling artillery through Durrës. Albanian soldiers and civilians drag a field gun through Durrës in May or June 1914, as fighting closed on the town during the revolt against Prince Wilhelm of Wied.
36. 1914 - Muslim refugees boarding a boat at Durrës. Families board a boat in Durrës harbour in the summer of 1914. The collapse of the Wied principality and the fighting around the town pushed civilians out by sea.
37. 1914 - Northern Albanian fighters outside Durrës. Armed men from the northern highlands photographed near Durrës in May 1914. Clansmen from the north came south to defend the new principality against the insurgents of central Albania.
38. 1914 - Cadets at the military college in Shkodër. Students of a military college in Shkodër pose for the camera in the summer of 1914, while the town was still administered by an international force.
39. 1914 - International troops in the streets of Shkodër. Soldiers of the international force move through Shkodër in July 1914. The Great Powers had taken the town from Montenegro in 1913 and governed it jointly until the First World War swept the arrangement away.
40. 1914 - Princess Sophie zu Wied out walking in Durrës. Princess Sophie zu Wied walks in Durrës in the spring of 1914. Her family's stay in Albania lasted barely half a year before the couple withdrew to Venice.
41. 1914 - French troops parading through Shkodër. A French detachment of the international garrison parades through Shkodër in July 1914, weeks before the powers withdrew and the war reached the Balkans.
42. 1914 - Prince Wilhelm of Wied in Durrës. Prince Wilhelm of Wied, chosen by the Great Powers to rule Albania, photographed in Durrës in May 1914. His reign lasted from March to September of that year.
43. 1914 - Northern Albanian troops march past the konak. Men from the north march past the prince's residence in Durrës in May 1914. The column was one of the few forces still loyal to the Wied government as the revolt spread.
44. 1914 - A delegation of Italo-Albanians in Durrës. Arbëresh visitors from southern Italy pose in Durrës in March 1914. Italy's old Albanian-speaking communities followed the birth of the Albanian state closely and lobbied for it abroad.
45. 1914 - The moment Major Thomson was shot at Durrës. A press drawing of the instant Dutch major Lodewijk Thomson leapt from the trench, sabre in hand, and was hit by the shot that killed him at Durrës in June 1914. He led the Dutch gendarmerie mission sent to build an Albanian police force.
46. 1914 - Durrës seen from the artillery ridge. The town of Durrës photographed in 1914 from the height where the Dutch captain Fabius had sited his guns during the siege by insurgent forces.
47. 1914 - Funeral procession for Major Thomson leaves the city gate. The cortege carrying Lodewijk Thomson passes out of the Durrës gate towards the harbour square in June 1914. The Dutch officer had become, briefly, the most visible foreign figure in Albanian public life.
48. 1914 - Quick-firing guns moved to the legation wall. German volunteers, supervised by Dutch officers, manhandle quick-firing guns to the rear wall of the legation in Durrës in 1914 as insurgents pressed on the town.
49. 1914 - Major Thomson promotes an Albanian gendarme. Lodewijk Thomson shakes hands with an Albanian gendarme he has just promoted to sergeant, 1914. Building a native gendarmerie was the Dutch mission's whole purpose.
50. 1914 - Machine gun posted at the Italian legation, Durrës. International troops man a machine gun outside the Italian legation in Durrës in 1914. The diplomatic quarter was fortified while the countryside was in revolt.
51. 1914 - Major Thomson's coffin taken aboard the Noord-Brabant. The remains of Lodewijk Thomson are carried aboard the Dutch warship Noord-Brabant at Durrës in 1914 for repatriation. His death ended the Netherlands' brief role in Albanian state-building.
52. 1914 - Barracks of the international garrison in Shkodër. The barracks housing the international troops stationed in Shkodër, photographed in 1914 during the unrest between the Wied government and the insurgents.
53. 1914 - Soldiers cooking in the open behind the konak. Men of the government force boil a pot in the open ground behind the konak at Durrës in 1914. Supply for the improvised Albanian army was rudimentary.
54. 1914 - The main street of Shkodër in 1914
55. 1914 - Sailors from the foreign warships prepare to land. Crews from the warships anchored off the Albanian coast make ready for a possible action against the insurgents in 1914. Six navies patrolled the young state's shore that summer.
56. 1914 - Patrol covering the advance outside Durrës. A patrol with a machine gun works along a ridge outside Durrës in the spring of 1914, covering the advance of relief troops against the insurgents.
57. 1914 - The repaired house of Esad Pasha Toptani, Durrës. The Durrës house of war minister Esad Pasha Toptani, shelled during the crisis of 1914 and afterwards patched up. Esad was arrested in May 1914 for plotting against Prince Wilhelm of Wied.
58. 1914 - Trenches of the government troops. Government troops in their trenches in 1914. The fighting around Durrës that summer was a siege war fought with hastily dug lines.
59. 1914 - The main gate of Durrës. 1914, guarded by soldiers of the international force. Beyond it lay the outpost line that Major Thomson crossed several times a day.
60. 1914 - Inspection at the bridge outside Durrës. The Albanian head of the gendarmerie inspects his men at the bridge that long separated Durrës from the insurgent lines, 1914.
61. 1914 - Malësor highlanders come in to submit. Highlanders of the Malësi hand over their rifles and set off for Durrës, then the provisional seat of Esad Pasha Toptani, in 1914. Bringing the northern clans under a central authority defeated every Albanian government of the period.
62. 1914 - Pupils and teacher at a girls' school in Shkodër. A class of girls with their teacher in Shkodër in August 1914. The Catholic and civic schools of the city kept teaching through the war years, when most of the country had no schools at all.
63. 1914 - The restaurant of the Hotel Clementi in Durrës. The dining room of the Hotel Clementi, also called the Europa, in Durrës around 1914. Run by an Austrian-born proprietor with the backing of the Austro-Hungarian trade mission, it was the meeting place of the foreign officers and diplomats in town.
64. 1914 - A physician of the Dutch mission at the beach hotel in Vlorë. The doctor F. de Groot photographed at the beach hotel in Vlorë around 1914. Two years after the declaration of independence in the town, Vlorë already had a modest seafront trade.
65. 1914 - Major Thomson lying in state at Durrës. The body of Major Lodewijk Thomson before his coffin was closed at Durrës, with a simple wreath from his Dutch comrades. Thomson led the Dutch military mission sent to organise a gendarmerie for the new Albanian state and was killed in the fighting there in June 1914.
66. 1914 - The Albanian flag during the events at Durrës. A press photograph from the disturbances at Durrës in 1914, when the government of Prince Wilhelm of Wied faced armed revolt within months of his arrival. The prince left the country that September.
67. 1914 - Troops passing the Muradie mosque at Vlore. Gendarmerie troops march past the sixteenth-century Muradie mosque in Vlore around 1914. The Dutch officers were training Albania's first regular armed force as the country slid towards war.
68. 1914 - The Dajlan bridge at Durres. The Dajlan bridge outside Durres, pictured in 1914, the year Prince Wilhelm of Wied arrived in the town and the country's brief principality began.
69. 1914 - Wilhelm of Wied accepts the Albanian crown. The Albanian delegation formally offers the crown to Prince Wilhelm of Wied in 1914. The Great Powers had chosen a German prince to rule the state carved out at the London conference.
70. 1914 - General de Veer with the gendarmerie at Vlore. De Veer stands with members of the gendarmerie at Vlore around 1914. The Dutch mission was meant to build a neutral force for a country that had almost no state apparatus of its own.
71. 1916 - Saranda before 1916. A hand-coloured postcard of Santi Quaranta, today Saranda, published by Stefanos Stournaras before 1916. The small southern port faced Corfu and changed hands repeatedly during the First World War.
72. 1917 - Prince Wied's residence seen from the mole at Durrës. The house used by Prince Wilhelm of Wied during his six months as ruler of Albania in 1914, photographed from the harbour a few years later under Austro-Hungarian occupation.
73. 1917 - Wartime footage from the Albanian front. Unedited archive film catalogued as troops charging uphill in Albania during the First World War. From 1915 the country was fought across by Austro-Hungarian, Italian, French and Serbian forces while its own statehood was barely three years old.
74. 1920 - Andon Beca. A portrait of Andon Beca from the 1920s, the decade in which the young Albanian state took shape around Tirana.
75. 1920 - Thank-you card for American support, 1920. Spiridon Ilo printed this card in 1920 to thank the United States for backing Albania's claim to continued statehood. Albania entered the League of Nations that December, ending the threat of partition.
76. 1920 - Qemal Karaosmani. One of the signatories of the 1912 declaration of independence at Vlore, photographed in the 1920s. The signatories came from every region and both faiths, which was the point the assembly wanted to make.
77. 1920-11-29 - Avni Rustemi on trial in Paris. Avni Rustemi stands trial in Paris on 29 November 1920 for shooting Esad Pasha Toptani, whom Albanian nationalists accused of selling the country. He was acquitted and returned home a hero, only to be assassinated in 1924.
78. 1926 - Catholic insurgents in arms, November 1926. Armed Catholic highlanders photographed in November 1926, during one of the northern risings against the Tirana government of Ahmet Zogu.
79. 1926 - Qazim Bodinaku. A studio portrait of the Albanian politician Qazim Bodinaku made in 1926, the year Ahmet Zogu consolidated his hold on the young republic.
80. 1926 - The royal villa at Durres. A postcard of the first royal villa at Durres, designed by Kristo Sotiri for Ahmet Zogu and destroyed by the earthquake of 1927. The seaside residence was part of the new state's attempt to look like a monarchy.
81. 1930 - Dhimiter Beratti. 1912 and later served the young state as a diplomat and publicist. Portrait made in the 1930s.
82. 1932 - Children of the Balkans. A silent educational film shot in the early 1930s, with close-up sequences of children in Albania alongside Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. Footage of ordinary interwar life in the region is scarce.
83. 1937 - The Romanian Institute at Saranda, 1937. The Romanian Institute at Saranda in 1937, one of several foreign cultural and archaeological missions operating in Zog's Albania in the years before the Italian invasion.
84. 1938-04-27 - King Zog marries Geraldine Apponyi. Motorcades, crowds and guests in uniform and traditional dress at the royal wedding in Tirana. Zog married the Hungarian-American countess in April 1938, less than a year before Italy drove him into exile.
85. 1938 - The diamond tiara of Queen Geraldine. The tiara worn by Geraldine Apponyi, made for her marriage to King Zog in Tirana in April 1938. The Albanian monarchy it belonged to lasted only until the Italian landing of April 1939.
86. 1938 - The Korçë ball of 1938. Guests at the annual ball in Korçë in 1938, among them the mayor and the prefect. Korçë had the country's densest civic life, built on trade with Greece and on money sent home from the United States.
87. 1939-04-13 - Westminster answers the invasion. British Paramount newsreel of 13 April 1939, filmed at the Houses of Parliament and in Downing Street as ministers arrived to settle Britain's response to Italy's seizure of Albania six days earlier. It was issued as 'Another Turn of the Axis'.
88. 1939-04-13 - Newsreel bulletin on Albania's fall. A Movietone item issued on 13 April 1939: general views of Tirana, scenes from King Zog's wedding and Queen Geraldine taking a parade salute. Count Ciano, Mussolini's foreign minister, is among the wedding guests.
89. 1939-04-17 - Italian troops land at Durres. Newsreel from 17 April 1939: Italian troopships unloading at Durres, tanks and infantry parading through the streets of Tirana, and Count Ciano arriving to supervise the occupation. King Zog had left the country ten days earlier.
90. 1939 - The Queen Mother Institute in Tirana. A postcard of the Nana Mbretneshe institute, the state boarding school for girls opened in Tirana under Zog. Secondary education for women was one of the monarchy's few lasting reforms.
91. 1939 - Fascist Italy seizes Albania. Newsreel footage, colourised, of the Italian invasion of April 1939 and the Balkan build-up around it. Within days King Zog had fled and the country was tied to Rome.
92. 1941 - Wounded from the Albanian front. A British Pathe newsreel issued as 'War in Albania'. The camera is inside a military hospital in Athens, where nurses and women volunteers hand out flowers, cigarettes and fruit to Greek soldiers wounded in the fighting on Albanian soil.
93. 1944 - Shefqet Dajiu. 28 November 1912. This portrait was made late in his life, in 1944.
94. 1944 - Flags over the liberation, 1944. Unissued British Pathe material shot as Albania was freed from German occupation in 1944. Allied and Albanian flags fly from a public building, aircraft pass over the streets and children wave at a mass rally.
95. 1944 - British commandos land on the Albanian coast. Warships approach the coast, commandos prepare and troops come ashore before pushing inland over rough country. Allied units worked alongside Albanian partisans against the German occupation.
96. 1944-08-08 - Allied troops move inland from the shore. Silent Movietone footage from August 1944: signalling from a ship's bridge, coastline and countryside, troops searching German prisoners and playing with children. The reel's own title misleads, since this is the Allied campaign in occupied Albania, not the 1939 invasion.
97. 2011-05-13 - The house of Ismail Qemali's provisional government, Vlorë. The building in Vlorë that served as the seat of the provisional government headed by Ismail Qemali after independence was declared on 28 November 1912. It is today the Independence Museum.
98. 2012-02-02 - The League of Prizren complex at night. The League buildings lit after dark in Prizren. The site is the main place of memory for the 1878 movement on either side of the Albania-Kosovo border.
99. 2012 - Frasheri brothers monument, Tirana. The monument to the Frasheri brothers on a Tirana street. Abdyl Frasheri led the League of Prizren delegation of 1878, the first organised Albanian political movement.
100. 2012-07-09 - Monument to Bajram Curri. The monument to Bajram Curri in the northern town that carries his name. Curri fought for Albanian independence and against Zog, and remains the emblem of the far north-east.
101. 2012-11-28 - Tirana marks one hundred years of independence. Crowds fill Tirana on 28 November 2012 for the centenary of Albanian independence. The date recalls Ismail Qemali raising the flag at Vlore in 1912.
102. 2012-11-28 - Centenary crowd in Tirana. A vertical view of the centenary crowd in Tirana on 28 November 2012. The anniversary was the largest state celebration Albania had staged since the fall of communism.
103. 2013-06-20 - Panorama of the League of Prizren complex. The courtyard and buildings of the League of Prizren seen in one sweep. The original complex was burnt in 1999 and rebuilt afterwards as a museum.
104. 2016-06-11 - House of the Frasheri brothers. The house of the Frasheri brothers, a protected monument. From this family came the alphabet, the first Albanian schoolbooks and much of the political argument for a separate Albanian state.
105. 2016-07-09 - Seat of the Vlorë National Assembly. The Vlorë house where the National Assembly met in 1912 and where the provisional government of Ismail Qemali worked until 1914. Independence was proclaimed from this address on 28 November 1912.
106. 2018-08-18 - The house of the League of Prizren. The timber-galleried house at the heart of the League complex, where the delegates of 1878 sat. It now holds the museum's core exhibition.
107. 2019-02-19 - Bust of Ahmet Zogu in the National History Museum. A bust of Ahmet Zogu, who ruled Albania as prime minister, president and finally as King Zog from 1928 until the Italian invasion of April 1939. The museum in Tirana has only displayed him openly since the 1990s.
108. 2019-06-07 - Independence monument in Lushnjë. The monument to independence in Lushnjë, the town where the 1920 congress moved the capital to Tirana and reasserted Albanian sovereignty after the war.
109. 2019-06-07 - Delegates' room, Congress of Lushnje Museum. The delegates' room reconstructed inside the Congress of Lushnje Museum. In January 1920 fifty delegates met in Lushnje, refused the carve-up of the country and set up the government that took Albania into the League of Nations.
110. 2019-06-07 - Shqiponja monument, Lushnje. The double-headed eagle monument at Lushnje, with the Congress museum behind it. The eagle has stood for Albania since Skanderbeg's banner and gives the country its name in Albanian, Shqiperia.
111. 2019 - Busts of the Frasheri brothers, Tirana. Abdyl, Naim and Sami Frasheri stand together in the National Historical Museum in Tirana. The three brothers drove the Rilindja, the nineteenth-century awakening that gave Albanian its alphabet and its case for statehood.
112. 2019-10-08 - The Zog years in the National History Museum. A gallery in the National History Museum in Tirana covering the Albanian kingdom and Zog I, who ruled from 1928 until the Italian invasion of April 1939.
113. 2020-08-06 - Inside the Independence Museum, Vlorë. A reconstructed working room inside the Independence Museum in Vlorë. The furnishings recall the improvised offices from which the new Albanian state was administered in 1912 and 1913.
114. 2020-08-06 - National Museum of Independence, Vlorë. The Muzeu Kombëtar i Pavarësisë occupies the villa where Albania's first government sat in 1912. The museum preserves the rooms used by Ismail Qemali and his ministers.
115. 2021-10-17 - Statues of Abdyl Frashëri, Ymer Prizreni and Sulejman Vokshi. The three leading figures of the League of Prizren, cast in bronze in the town where the League met. Abdyl Frashëri went on to argue the Albanian case in the European capitals.
116. 2022-05-26 - The League of Prizren complex. The restored complex in Prizren where Albanian delegates met in June 1878 to resist the partition of Albanian-inhabited lands. The League is treated as the start of the national awakening.
117. 2025-02-19 - Lushnje history museum from the air. An aerial view of the history museum at Lushnje in 2025. The Congress of Lushnje met here in January 1920, rejected the partition of Albania planned by the Paris peace conference and moved the capital to Tirana.
118. 2025-09-01 - Statue of Queen Geraldine in Tirana. The bronze of Geraldine Apponyi, Hungarian-born queen of the Albanians, unveiled in Tirana in 2022. She married Zog in April 1938 and left the country with him a year later, two days after giving birth, as Italian troops landed.
119. 2026 - Bust of Hasan Prishtina, Kukes. The bust of Hasan Prishtina outside the culture palace in Kukes. Prishtina led the Albanian revolt of 1912 that helped force the Ottoman government's hand months before independence was declared at Vlore.