The National Archaeological Museum is located in Mother Teresa Square. It was the first museum to open in Albania after WW2. Inaugurated in 1948 as the Archaeological and Ethnographic museum, the ethnographic section was later, in 1976, moved. Located in the same building as the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences, the museum houses exhibits from prehistory, through historical times to the Middle Ages.
It is responsible for the many archaeological digs and research conducted in the country and is the parent institution of several other museums, including the Durrës Archaeological Museum. It has a library of some 7,200 volumes