Tirana is the capital of Albania and enjoys a beautiful setting between the ranges of Dajti mountain from one side and the coastal plains on the other one. Tirana is on the same parallel as Naples, Madrid and Istanbul and on the same meridian as Budapest and Krakow

This settlement has been inhabited as early back as the Neolithic\r\nperiod. The ruins of die castle of first century A.D. which is likely\r\nto be the castle mentioned with the name Tirkan by Byzantine historian Procop (VI century) have been unearthed in the foot of Dajti mountain.
There are some hypothesis about the origins of the name Tirana:

* First, it is thought that Tirana comes from the word Theranda found in ancient Greek and Latin sources because those living there called it Të ranat ("fallen material"), because the plain was formed as a result of the strong materials which were brought by the water from the surrounding mountains.
* Second, Tirana comes from Tirkan. Tirkan was a castle on the face of mount Dajti.
* Third, an old Tirana tale says that Sulejman Pasha took the name of the city from an old lady whom he had met at the site where he was going to build the city. When Sulejman Pasha asked the old lady what she was doing she answered “ Po tir an (meaning "spinning silk").
* Forth, "Tirana" comes from old Greek, "Tyros" which means dairy. It is thought that this variant remained, because in the field of Tirana, the shepherds of the nearby areas used to trade dairy products.

For the first time, Tirana's name in the nowadays form was mentioned in 1418 in a Venetian document. For the first time the registration of lands was done under the ottoman invasion in 1431-1432 Tirana had 60 inhabited areas with near 1000 houses and 7300 inhabitants. In the XV -century as Marin Barleti mentions, there was Tirana e Madhe and Tirana e Vogel (Big and Small Tirana). In the registrations of 1583, the area of Tirana resulted to have 110 inhabited areas, 2900 houses and 20,000 inhabitants. The first district in Tirana was Bami. Sulejman Pasha, whose background was from Mullet, established Tirana in 1614. First, he constructed a mosque, a bakery and a hamam (Turkish sauna). Tirana clock

Two centuries later, the direction of the city went to the family of Toptani, from Kruja. The two oldest neighborhoods of Tirana were that of Mujos and that of Pazari, situated between the actual center and "Elbasani" street, in the two sides of Lana.

In 1769 Tirana's area exported 2600 barrels of olive oil and 14.000 stuffed packages of tobacco to Venetian trades.

In 2000 the center of Tirana, from the Central University Corpus and up to the "Skanderbeg" square was declared as Cultural Assemble with particular values under the state's protection, that same year in this area began a restoring process named "Return to Identity".

Imazhe te Ngjitura

	tirana-mozaik.jpg (12.2 KB, 0 vezhgime)
	tirana-clock.jpg (20.1 KB, 0 vezhgime)

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