(Sazan Island) Benito Mussolini wanted the Albanian island of Sazan and built a house there, Enver Hoxha made it a military base cut off from the world. Today, Ivanka Trump wants to turn this island into a bunker for millionaires, luxury villas and breathtaking views.
It is a piece of history that Donald Trump’s daughter is preparing to transform – with the blessing of the Albanian government, which has made tourism the cornerstone of the country’s development. If it sees the light of day, the project will consist of a few dozen villas melted into the rocks of Sazan.
Several permits are still needed, but on the coast it is being talked about as if the agreement has already been signed.
“We are eager for this to start because it triggers chain reactions for the city’s economy,” says Vlora Mayor Ermal Dredha, along a promenade where hotels have been springing up since Albania became the new hot tourist destination on this side of the Mediterranean – a million tourists landed in Tirana in July.
In Sazan, there are no beach shops or restaurants with multilingual menus. For now, there is… nothing.
PHOTO ADNAN BECI, ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The Albanian island of Sazan is, in high season, visited by tourists who come by boat to explore its winding paths.
Wild figs, mulberry trees as far as the eye can see, bright green pine trees and turquoise water. In the middle of this Garden of Eden without water or electricity, thousands of bunkers, the remains of buildings eaten by plants, and the deafening song of cicadas.
These ruins are all that remain of the homes of the thousands of soldiers who were stationed here during the socialist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, one of the harshest, most closed and paranoid in the world. On these 5.7 square kilometers, there were more than 2,000 of them, with wives and children, a cinema, a school, a hospital, and enough to keep them cut off from the world for six months, while the rest of Albania lacked everything.
Abandoned
Ylli Mecaj, 78, was one of Sazan’s soldiers. He spent 18 years on the island, his children were born there, his wife taught there.
He left it a few months before the fall of a regime for which he is one of the last nostalgics. The vast majority of the Albanian population keeps above all memories of deprivation, clandestine emigration at the risk of their lives, and surveillance.
The island was dotted with 2,840 bunkers with heavy machine guns and other automatic weapons. There were also miles of tunnels and underground installations, fallout shelters and storage for ammunition and food supplies,” the naval officer recalls.
Ylli Mecaj, 78, former soldier of Sazan
“After the fall of the regime, in the early 90s, I returned to Sazan. I felt sick, I started to cry to see it destroyed, abandoned, humiliated,” remembers the former sailor, wearing a period cap on his head, before climbing the steps leading to his old apartment whose balcony overlooks blue as far as the eye can see.
“Sazan is no longer Sazan,” he said. “There are no more weapons, no cannons, no anti-aircraft machine guns, no ships, the bunkers are in ruins. It is open to whoever wants to occupy it.”
After the fall of the regime, the island escaped destruction, but when the Albanian economy collapsed in 1997 – when the massive Ponzi scheme on which it was based collapsed – all the reserves and military depots there were looted. It was not reopened to the public until 2015.
PHOTO ADNAN BECI, ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
An abandoned former military command building on top of a hill on Sazan Island.
Strategically located at the entrance to the Otranto Channel which links the Adriatic and Ionian seas, the island served as an outpost for all those who conquered it: Byzantines, Venetians, Germans, Italians…
Still administratively considered a military zone, during the high season it is visited every day by tourists who come by boat to explore the winding paths and admire the island’s only inhabitant: a small grey donkey.
No details have been released about how the Trump family’s luxury hotel will be built — just a few plans posted on Instagram and hints in an interview in July.
In it, the businesswoman explains that the island’s isolation makes it a gem – and a logistical headache.
“Just getting the materials to the island is no small feat, but we will do it,” promises the daughter of the former American president and new candidate, all with “the best architects.”
If Ivanka Trump and her husband’s plans come to fruition, no one knows whether tourists will still be allowed to stop there. Or whether the bunkers will take on another face, that of luxury villas sheltered from the curious.