Sugar Factory Ruins

The ruins of a former sugar factory in a town built with substantial Soviet input in the early 1950s. The plant once had its own CHP station with a tall chimney and cooling tower, as well as numerous production workshops and technical buildings. It was most likely closed in the 1990s and stripped for scrap metal in the 2000s.

As of 2025, the site is in a state of dangerous disrepair; part of the grounds has been adapted for visitors — there is a working fish restaurant, a café called Moskva, sculptures and murals referencing Albania’s past cooperation with communist countries and its present ties to capitalist ones. The derelict buildings are open and you can wander freely among them, though warning signs and planks blocking certain paths appear here and there. There is also an enormous shaggy dog with a kennel — what exactly it is guarding is unclear.

The CHP cooling tower is in a particularly dire state: cracks run through the shell, the geometry is visibly warped.