The story of colored city

In the years ’90, Tirana was a grey city. With little money to repair the city’s rundown infrastructure, the Municipality undertook a rough-and-ready makeover, especially for the communist-era apartment buildings to be repainted in bright, bold colors. It was the first time such bright colors were used in Tirana since the buildings’ most preferred colors were black, grey, or white for some decades. Now, the Municipality uses bright colors to re-paint the old ones and the new buildings added to the city. There are some areas where you can see the best colorful buildings in Tirana.

#1 Rainbow building

The rainbow building is one of the iconic places of colorful Tirana. It is located near the Blloku area, at Wilson Square. Every visitor to Tirana wants to see this building and take pictures. Besides gazing into the fascinating building, this area is filled with trendy bars, which make it a perfect place to drink coffee.

#2 -The so-called “titanic” building

Throughout Bajram Curri Boulevard, you will find a lot of buildings painted green, blue, red, yellow, etc, but we like the titanic building, referred to by locals because of its length.  It is the most photographed photo, and its strong purple color and big space make it special.

#3- Bizarre geometric patterns

You will find all the buildings below in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs if you take the Ring road “or Unaza.” All the buildings around “Unaza”, which are communist style, are colored in different patterns and colors. They were painted by different painters, each with its phantasy, no theme or guideline.  Colors, shapes, and styles all differ from one another and make each of them unique, so you can’t find two similarities.

The painted buildings are in three main areas: Around Unaza, Rr. Kavajes and “Tirana e Re”

Shallvare’s buildings

The new mayor follows Rama’s steps toward brightening the old buildings. Coloring some of the main buildings around the center, Veliaj started to use a new model to redecorate them with big thematic paintings. He engaged some artists of street art to create some fables which are related to the area or to some old tales. It’s nice to see these changes because people now are naming these areas after the newly painted buildings.

People love these colors because they raise the spirit of this new emerging city. It is somehow hard to understand the model of architecture in Albania, but it is evident that it is a mix of ancient traditional buildings, old communist style, and new modern buildings.  And all this mixed infrastructure is making Tirana a unique city.

Graffiti is widespread art in Tirana’s buildings, and the mayor hired artists to create art in different areas of the city, like this mural by the artist Franko.

New Bazaar hosts some contemporary painted buildings, but it respects tradition and gives back to the city its beauty and authenticity. The New Bazaar has already become a major attraction of the city due to the unique facades that have preserved the Italian architectural style, the decoration with Albanian motives, and public spaces to enjoy fresh food and rest.