The investiment was made with the financial support of the owner of the terrain and the old edifice from the ex-historic museum of the city,making true the idea announced from The Cultural Monuments Insitute.
The Elbasani Castle is built in the roman epoch and has a quadratic shape with 4 angled towers,8towers which make 4 entries,and 16 other towers,which are found doubly in the segments between the main towers.
The proportions of this castle,are made to predict not only the instalation of a military unit but even the progress of a authentic urban situation,creating a typical city of that epoch,with two main drive axes placed in the north-south and east-west direction.In the east-west axis passed the known Egnantia way,which begun in Rome and ended in the easter part of the Empire,being for the time the most important artery.
Elbasani lived and got developed more or less in the same places even after the Roman,Byzantine and Turkish epoch,and in the same way we find it today,a part of the city inside the contour defined from the walls and towers.
This overcrowding made the castle’s wall seem very vulnerable,giving the image of a “shorty” castle
To the intervention request,in the situation in which this part of the castle is,realizing spaces serving to the commercial role,was appended to the idea that the actions would have as object the making the castle’s elements and archeologic discoveries as evident as they can be.In the same time was determined since the beginig ,the surface under archeogical excavation,and the new building’s distances.The excavation was made along the castle’s wall from the wester side of about 80m and with a distance of 22m from it.The excavation’s depth till in the original level of the roman epoch went about 4.5m.In the ending of this preocces the structure and the castle’s elements,the wall,the towers,etc.,for the first time,after centuries,was visible for the public,to which was creating the opportunity of tasting a wonderful monumental architechtonic show.
The real castle’s propotion,the development or the changes that it passed from an epoch to another became readable thanks to the excavation.
Before making the new buldings,and the elaboration of the existing edifice,we compiled the standarts where the process would be regarded.All the intervations have respected the monumental and archeological values.The distance about 12 m from the castle’s wall was defined with the aim that it must be as enough as from all the around space angles it could be seen the entire frontage, and the wall wouldn’s be avoided or truncated anyway.The bar was made of two floors with the best attentions not to come out too much over the nowaday terrain quota.Meatime the visual communication of the local’s inside part and the environment was conditioned from the maximum of transparence.During all the time the public frequenting the bar can be in visual contact with the wall’s view.The undergroung floor is used for the exposure of the ruins found from the excavation giving again the opportunity to get informed to the public.In this case we have to do with the so-called “museal aspect” in nature,for although the ruins,in this space it’ll be exposed even objects found during the archeogical excavation like sculptures,and other epigraphies.
In the excavation parcel’s end, in the corner has been built a theatre or antic type Odeon I.This object and its role complets perfectly the roles this complex has commited.
If the above-mentioned bar, the restorant and the hotel installed in the old edifice have the commercial role,the odeum is fated for the cultural one.In the other interventions it was made the adaption of the old edifice’s functional and visible hand,where unce upon a time it stand the museum.Its first floor is a restaurant,the other one is hotel with 7 rooms and a conversation room.In the part under the terrain quota there’s another floor which will be used as a pothouse.
In the elaboration of the edifice,beside the selection of the functional requests,it was payed attention that its final view would be in harmony with the complex and the monumental situation.In its frontage have been aplicated achitechtonic elements,which being in harmony with each other,recall in the same time different epochs of the architectonic culture.In the frontal facade still remains the antic temple’s silhouette,and in the north side is aplicated a stoned wall,element which remembers the medieval epochin the churche’s architecture like the belfries but stylized.This element gives balance to the facade and meantime emphasizes the verticality eliminating the monotony that the linearity of the other elements could give.In the norther facade we used only architectonic elements which come from the popular house not stiring this way its entire balance.
For all the complex,the new builts,and those which were recovered, it was used an elements which connects all the units and puts them in a collective atmosphere.Like in the bar in the excavated zone,so also in the recovered edifice, it were aplicated red cylindrical colone.Another important role for the harmony of the complex is the wonderful greenness.
The works in this complex in most of them are ended and have alredy given a positive result in the aim we had since in the beginning of the project.The public since the first steps in the entry, suddenly finds a nice and full of values situation,where most conspicuous are them which belong to the Albanian monument and history.