Mother Teresa Square

Mother Teresa Square closes the southern end of Bulevardi Deshmoret e Kombit, Tirana's central north-south axis. It was laid out in the late 1930s by Italian planners under Mussolini as a monumental boulevard of government buildings - hence the symmetric, axial frontages around the square. Today it is lined by the main buildings of the University of Tirana, the Polytechnic and the Archaeological Museum. The name honors the Skopje-born ethnic-Albanian nun Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. A statue on a tall plinth marks the center, with two lanes of traffic circling it.