bg Tirana

Villa Xhemal Aranitasi

- Rruga Ibrahim Rugova 56 -
The two-story building, which was built somewhere at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, was constructed for the residential needs of the Albanian general and commander in chief of the Royal Albanian Army, Xhemal Aranitasi. He was born on January 25, 1886, in the village of , as the son of Ibrahim Aranitasi, an army colonel of the Ottoman Empire, and Esma Jahobegaj. He graduated from the Military High School in Monastir, nowadays , and then at the Military Academy in . During the and , he fought in the Ottoman army as the leader of a machine gun unit. During the , when most of the territory of Albania was invaded by the Austro-Hungarian Army, he served in the Aranitas municipality as a commander of the gendarmerie.

In 1920, he joined the Royal Albanian Army, and four years later, he was a battalion commander. In 1925, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he became the general commander of the Royal Albanian Army. In 1939, as minister of war, in the face of war with the Kingdom of Italy, he forbade the press publication of popular mobilization and prohibited issuing weapons to the civilian population. On April 6, 1939, on the eve of the invasion of Albania by the Royal Italian Army, Xhemal Aranitasi left the country and settled in Turkey, where he lived until the end of his life on March 13, 1961, at age 75.
The tower-like structure of the building, which was built in the Italianate architectural style, was covered with a pyramid hip roof that was covered with roof tiles. The building features many arched windows, including and , which were flanked by that were crowned with a Doric . Underneath the eaves, as well as underneath the , you can see loads of . The that runs around the entire tower-like structure, is supported by a lot of and secured with a stone balustrade.