Rozafa Castle is a structure of stone built on a high hill in the northern Albanian city of Shkodra. You can have a panoramic view from there: River Buna quietly running towards Adriatic Sea; Drin River coming from the mountaineering area and fields and high hills and mountains around. The construction of the castle with stones started by the Illyrian tribu Labeat. After the castle was built and people felt safer, the city developed fast and even issued a coin named Scodrinon 230 b.c.. In 181 b.c. Scodrion became capital of Illyria. In 168 it was occupied by Roman Empire and later by Bulgarians. In 1396 it became part of Venice, which reconstructed the castle and renamed the city as Scutari.
The Castle was the last castle to fall in 1479 under the attack of 100 thousand soldiers of Sultan Mehmeti II. The resistance is described by the famous historian Marin Barleti in the book “The siege of Shkodra”, which was published in Europe in 1504. The castle was abandoned in 1865 when Drin river deviated from its normal bed.
As many other castles, Rozafa Castle is surrounded in legend and mysticism. Rozafa Castle though, it is quite extraordinary. According to its legend, three brothers undertook to build the walls of the castle, which would practically be the walls of the city, having as main function the defense of the city from enemies.
The three brothers worked hard, day and night, to build the castle, but what they erected during the day, collapsed at night. And this process of building and collapse continued for a while, until a day an old man who was passing by saw them and understood what was happening. He strongly advised them that the walls would be kept from falling only if a human life was sacrificed, immured in their foundations.
The three brothers took his advice and decided to sacrifice one of their wives: the first one who would coincide serving them lunch the next day. The faith, but also the honesty of the youngest brother, who did not disclose the decision to her, picked Rozafa, the wife of the youngest brother. As the legend tells, she accepted to be immured, but prayed to the brothers to immure her in half. She wanted to have one breast, one eye, one hand and one foot free for feeding, watching, caressing the newborn boy and for rocking the cradle.
Rozafa’ s story and sacrifice has been subject to many poems, books and songs. One of the poems goes like this:
When you wall me
Leave my right eye exposed
Leave my right breast exposed
Leave my right hand exposed
Leave my right foot exposed
for the sake of my newborn son
So, when he starts crying
I can see him with one eye
I can caress him with one hand
I can feed him with one breast
I can rock his cradle with one foot
May the castle breast be walled,
May the castle rise strong,
May my son be happy!
Legends about human life sacrifice to the benefit of people exists almost everywhere and reflect efforts of a few men to create civilization. With her body Rozafa kept her son alive, but she gave life to a whole city. As always happens, someone is sacrificed for something bigger to continue. And Shkodra survived on the legendary sacrifice.
History of mankind has proven that by giving a sacred thing, you can win something sacred, too! Life is sacred. Rozafa, may have died as other people, forgotten, but she died, not knowing why, to live forever as a legend.
An interesting part of the legend is the story told by Rozafa itself.
Written by Gjekë Marinaj it goes like this
STORY TOLD BY ROZAFA
Based on the prejudice
that a woman less than a man is worth,
They immured me.
Based on the fact
Blood I fed,
The castle managed to stand on the feet.
Afraid of being called as witness
Drin river continued running through its bed.
Under the pretext of
Self-sacrifice of human life
They made a legend of me.
Under the perception
That everyone was right
I had to bury up the word “murder”.
Rozafa was immured for the sake of the customary rules. So, the legend of Rozafa should be considered as a legend only in part. The other part, the construction of walls of the castle is not a legend. The walls are heavy and imposing. They are so true that we can touch any time we can visit the Castle. Those walls can tell the story of a castle that was not built for an architectural capriccio, but mainly for defending the city and its people against all kinds of enemies.
Many years passed since Rozafa Castle was built and the city of Shkodra underwent attacks by various invaders. The city surrendered some times, and some other times managed to resist. Time has proven how that city became a point of reference for the rest of Albania in the areas of culture, art and sport.
An interesting fact is that the first school for art in Albania started exactly in the city the legend of Rozafa Castle is told. The school arose in the early decades of the twentieth century by artists from Shkodra namely, Kolë Idromeno (1860-1939) Andrea Kushi (1884-1959), Simon Rrota (1887-1961) and Zef Kolombi (1907-1949). Young students in Shkodra were probably the first to exhibit their drawings to the public.
A Friends of Art Society (Shoqnia Miqt’ e Artit) was formed with the idea to creating a national gallery. An art school (Shkolla e vizatimit), managed initially by Andrea Kushi and then formally by the Italian artist Mario Ridola, was founded in Tirana in January 1932 which inspired some hope and enthusiasm to younger painters. Further major exhibitions were held in June 1942 and, under the nascent communist regime, in April 1945. Albanian painting, though modest in its achievements by European standards, could rely upon a solid tradition by this time.
The communist takeover at the end of the Second World War caused great upheaval in Albanian painting in the coming years, as it did in virtually all other spheres of activity. Some earlier painters withdrew from public life. Others tried to adapt to the new circumstances by producing works of the “socialist art”, but it is generally agreed that few works in the following thirty years had any sustained aesthetic value. Particularly difficult for Albanian artists was the decade of political turmoil from the cultural revolution of 1966-1967 which continued up until 1975, when many painters were imprisoned or deported and many works totally destroyed. A zenith of painting in the socialist tradition was reached in the late 1970s and 1980s when revolutionary and nationalist passion managed to inspire many artists to experiment cautiously in new directions. Though the works of this period were used for supporting the propaganda of the State, many of them maintain interesting aesthetic. It is a fact that new institutions for the promotion of the arts were created during socialist period. The Jordan Misja Academy was founded in 1945 in Tirana to be followed by similar schools in other towns. In September 1960, a High Institute of Figurative Art (Instituti i Lartë i Arteve Figurative) was created in Tirana.
Since the fall of the dictatorship, Albanian artists are now able to let their creative impulses walk and run free, both at home and abroad, though they have, compared to the communist period, been deprived of institutional support. The largest collection of Albanian art is that of the National Gallery in Tirana, with minor collections in Korça and Shkodra.
The majority of artworks of this exhibition are part of the large collection of the private collection of GALERIAKALO.
Their special selection under the title Legend of a castle was inspired by the idea that artists who come from cities where castles are surrounded by mystery and legend reflect somehow the spirit of legends in their art, too.
This is true if one looks at the paintings of Edi Hila. His work named Promenade can be very well named The girl approaching the castle; the work of Sidi Kanani Post-industrial can well be named "A contemporary castle"; each of sculptures of a woman by Sadik Spahija and Pjerin Kolnikaj respectively, may resemble to the body of Rozafa, who accepted to be sacrificed for the sake of something big that the history would echo from generation to generation - the building of the walls of the castle that later would take her name. The other works like the Windows by Andi Hila can bring us back the times when castles in Albania were under siege and the walls and windows had to be shut as to not allow enemies enter. The novel of the famous writer Ismail Kadare The castle describes perfectly the life in Albanian castles under the siege by enemies. So the legends go on and part of them are also the surroundings like the lakes and rivers, seas, cities and heroes. The paintings of Eros Dibra take another approach. As a native of Shkodra, Eros brings the legends of his city through the cypresses, decorating houses built by the upper bank of Buna river, quite close to Rozafa Castle. Cypresses are leaning, like Rozafa did while she accepted the sublime act - being sacrificed, as her baby boy needed breast-feeding and mother care.
Shkodra has a number of heroes that are in the center of legends and stories. Gjergj Elez Alia, Muji e Halili, Kostandin, and their heroic lives has been often transposed on canvas and sculptures as other stories for Berati, Gjirokaster, Vlora castles. They built walls, cities and many other things, but above all they built bravery, trust, fairness, justice. The legends are partly fictions, as they contain facts that are true. The castles are there to testify they were truly built. Whether the human sacrifice helped walls stand this is another matter. The books written by famous Albanians or Albanologists or other foreign researchers are also evidence that castles existed as created by men for men.
This modest exhibition tries to bring back, through canvas and sculpture, the bravery of the legendary woman Rozafa to those who know only a little about tiny Albania’s big and old history. By thanking the Art Club of Council of Europe and, particularly the Albanian Judge of the European Court of Human Rights, Ledi Bianku, who happens to be from Shkodra, for their willingness, commitment and support to make this exhibition happen, we welcome visitors to express their views on the theme of the exhibition and the content of the selected works that are being displayed today to stay one month here, in this wonderful corner of the Palace of Europe.