Naziresha Mosque

The Naziresha Mosque on the southern edge of Elbasan dates from 1599 and is among the oldest surviving Ottoman mosques in Albania. Listed as a national cultural monument, it endured both the militant atheism of the Enver Hoxha era, when between 1967 and 1990 Albania banned all religious practice and demolished hundreds of mosques, and the more recent waves of road and rail construction that now run right past its walls. The plain structure, with a square prayer hall and stubby minaret, sits beside the bypass road and the railway line, an unintentional monument to four centuries of continuity. Visitors find a quiet, barely touristed place where locals still come to pray.