The exhibition, titled “Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Codices”, was presented as part of the First International Conference “Albania in the Byzantine Period”, hosted in Tirana by the Academy of Sciences.

Senior archive officials, including Deputy Director General Endrit Musaj and Marinela Ndria, as well as scholar Agamemnonas Tselikas, curator and moderator Sokol Çunga, along with numerous Byzantine researchers and students, attended the event.

In opening remarks, Musaj said the archives are committed to promoting this heritage, which forms an inseparable part of Albania’s history and national identity.

“The archival network of the Republic of Albania had the historical fortune not only to inherit documents from state institutions since independence, but also to safeguard valuable collections that traditionally lay outside state archives,” Musaj said. “Among the most precious treasures is the ‘Collection of Albanian Codices’, presented in this exhibition. This fund is a cornerstone of Albanian written culture and one of the most important testimonies of our civilisation continuity.”

Tselikas described the exhibition as a rare bridge between past, present and future.

“To work with manuscripts means not only to engage with the past, but also with the present and the future,” he said. “As we view them, we come into contact with the author, the copyist and those who have preserved them.”

Through the exhibition, visitors were able to view up close Byzantine and post-Byzantine codices preserved in Albania’s archives, showcasing unique manuscripts reflecting liturgical, artistic and intellectual traditions across centuries. The collection also features miniatures, ancient scripts and early iconographic techniques illustrating the craftsmanship of historic scriptoria.

The “Collection of Albanian Codices” was first presented internationally at the Vatican in 2000 in an exhibition titled “Gli Evangeli degli Popoli”, raising awareness of the manuscripts’ significance both domestically and abroad.

The DPA later organised another major exhibition in 2010 and participated in the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Sofia to further document and promote the collection. It has also previously staged a travelling poster exhibition aimed at bringing this heritage closer to the public.

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