In the heart of Tirana, a brutalist villa once synonymous with fear and repression has been reborn as a centre for artistic freedom. Vila 31, the former residence of Albania’s hardline communist dictator Enver Hoxha, opened this spring as an international arts and residency hub.
For decades, the fortress-like building symbolised Albania’s darkest years. Hoxha, who led the country from the end of World War II until his death in 1985, transformed Albania into one of the world’s most isolated regimes. Obsessed with ideological purity, he banned religion and artistic expression, cut ties with both the Soviet Union and China, and plunged the nation into cultural and political isolation that earned it the nickname ‘the North Korea of Europe’. From Vila 31, he is believed to have orchestrated the brutal suppression of dissent, violent persecution of artists, and the activities of the Sigurimi, Albania’s feared secret police.
Built between 1972 and 1974 by Italian workers, the villa reflected Hoxha’s vision of modernity. Its interiors featured marble floors, fireplaces by Western designers, an indoor pool, and a home cinema – luxuries that stood in stark contrast to the widespread poverty outside its walls. Hoxha’s family remained in the house until the communist regime collapsed in the early 1990s.
Long after Hoxha’s death in 1985, the house remained sealed off, a ghostly relic in the heart of Tirana, untouched for decades. ‘It was a villa frozen in time, with a Hollywood 1970s vibe,’ said Bruno Julliard, Art Explora’s director general, in an interview with Beaux-Arts Magazine.
That changed in April 2024, when the Art Explora Foundation, in partnership with the Albanian government, transformed the site into Vila 31-Art Explora, a space dedicated to cultural exchange and artistic experimentation. Founded in 2019 by French entrepreneur Frédéric Jousset, Art Explora aims to democratise access to culture and become a key artistic platform in the Balkans.
The Vila 31 project was born from a conversation four years ago between Jousset and Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama, himself a former painter and a driving force behind Tirana’s colourful urban revival.
As journalist Lucy Fulford recounts in Plaster Magazine, Tirana’s skyline now mixes ‘glitzy chunks of steel and glass starchitecture’ with ‘hotchpotch relics of Albania’s club sandwich history: communist modernism with sprinklings of Ottoman, all set against Jurassic Park-scale Skanderbeg mountains’. Fulford expected a ‘grey communist hellscape’ but instead found streets splashed with colour, ‘geometric murals and housing blocks resembling Damien Hirst spot paintings’.
‘The villa was a ghost in the very centre of Tirana,’ echoes Blanche de Lestrange, Art Explora’s artistic director, as quoted in The Art Newspaper. ‘At the time of the dictator, artists were completely banned, so it was important for the prime minister to give a central and major place to artists – a kind of thumbing our noses at a history of censorship.’
Rather than erasing the building’s past, the conversion by NeM Architectes preserves key architectural elements while radically reimagining the interiors. Vila 31 now offers accommodation, studio space, workshops, a library, and a screening room for up to 30 artists per year, selected for three-month residencies in collaboration with the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, and the Oral History Kosovo initiative. The programme also pairs international curators and researchers with local art communities and opens its doors to the public through exhibitions and open studio events.
Some Albanians initially voiced discomfort about repurposing the dictator’s home, but ultimately saw the artistic revival as more meaningful than turning the site into a luxury hotel.
The Vila 31 launch coincides with the Art Explora Festival, which brought immersive virtual reality experiences alongside exhibitions in partnership with the Louvre and international artists such as Etel Adnan, Joan Miró, and Albania’s own Anri Sala.
Long one of Europe’s poorest countries, Albania is now positioning itself as a rising cultural and touristic destination. The transformation of Vila 31 is part of a broader narrative of openness, creativity, and reconciliation with the past – a kind of exorcism of the site’s ghosts through art.
