The Krujë Castle tower, a landmark monument of historical and cultural values, is being restored to its former glory and identity under a restoration project already underway in collaboration with the Swedish government.

“The emergency reinforcement work has completed and the tower is now stabilized. The initial step launched by the Albanian government focused on planning a project to cope with the emergency phase. No direct access techniques were used during the restoration project as such techniques would abrade the building surface and remove the stones and construction material,” the Minister of Culture Elva Margariti explained as she accompanied the Prime Minister Edi Rama during a visit to the site.

The project’s goal is to prevent further degradation of the Clock Tower and reinforce it to withstand seismic activity in the future. The reinforcement work will improve the structure’s capacity for a relatively long future, providing the opportunities for further documentation of the tower, as well as the implementation of the ultimate restoration project.

“The project is being implemented with the government of Sweden and it allowed us to advance further by reinforcing this whole structure. The design was reviewed once the structure was closely inspected and a series of technical alterations were made. The structure is now fully reinforced, both internally and externally. It is also fully accessible and this allows us to design a more accurate final restoration project. We have also already started to move ahead with the US government funding, the Ambassador’s fund amounting to over $800,000 that is provided for the very first time to Albania to support the post-earthquake reconstruction of the cultural heritage sites and monuments and we will soon kick off the geological survey of the whole area under the tower. Experts are detailing the project and the US government funding will allow us to fully restore the monument. The situation is actually graver than what we had discovered initially. The geological survey around the tower is set to complete in the next two months and we will then proceed with full implementation of the Ambassador’s fund. At this stage the tower is all monitored by sensor for every movement. We have combined many digital elements for the first time and this has brought significant improvements in cultural heritage sites,” Culture Minister said.