Pyramid of Tirana

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Pyramid of Tirana

The Pyramid of Tirana is a large concrete building in Tirana, Albania. It opened in 1988 as the Enver Hoxha Museum, designed by Pranvera Hoxha (Hoxha’s daughter) with collaborators Pirro Vaso, Klement Kolaneci, and Vladimir Bregu. When it was built, it was one of Albania’s most expensive structures and is sometimes called an Enver Hoxha Mausoleum, though that wasn’t its official name.

After the collapse of communism in 1991, the pyramid stopped being a museum and became a conference center and exhibition venue. During the Kosovo War in 1999, it was used as a NATO base. From 2001, parts of the building housed Top Channel and Top Albania Radio, while other areas fell into disrepair and were used as a parking lot.

In 2018, a plan was announced to turn the pyramid into TUMO Tirana, a youth IT center focused on programming, robotics, and startups. The renovation, led by the architecture firm MVRDV, kept the original concrete structure but added terraces, skylights, and colorful new design elements. Construction began in 2021, and the renovated pyramid opened to the public in October 2023, with access to the exterior stepped facade already available from May 2023. The reopening coincided with the Western Balkans Summit in Tirana.

Today, the building hosts spaces for technology, art, and education aimed at young people, while the surrounding land has been repurposed into terraces and public areas. It is located at Boulevard Deshmoret e Kombit 5, Tirana, Albania (coordinates: 41.32306°N, 19.82139°E). There have been demolition proposals, including building a new Albanian Parliament on the site, but in 2017 it was announced that the pyramid would not be demolished and would instead be refurbished.