A wise man once managed to convey to the imagination of the whole world through one of his phrases, the image of heaven, calling it a kind of library. While I would say that the library is a kind of heaven. I would even call the National Library of Albania a big cloud of dreams, even a spiral that goes to infinity, built with millions and millions of drawers of dreams.

In this 100-year-old cathedral, the dreams of Albanians to write, speak and pass down the Albanian language from generation to generation, to exercise religious faith, dreams of self-government, to burst the iron chains of political and cultural isolation, to feel part of Europe, not only as a geographical piece of this continent..

But the broken dreams of Albanians are also sheltered here, left in manuscripts of ideologues and writers, dedications of censored books, confiscated from the libraries of intellectuals and gentlemen, few in their time , who changed their suit and bow tie to prison clothes or the standard of the communist dock..

When the idea for this exhibition had just started to take shape, I browsed some old books on the director’s desk, part of a collection, signed with a beautiful script, dedicated to a young lady.. While fate I had her books in my hands, I didn’t know the fate of either the sender or the lady who once browsed these pages… And I was torn and wanted to know more.

Such fate, human history, traces superimposed on narratives, are preserved and hidden in thousands of books in our National Library.

Not only great classics, Nobelists, scientists, historians, Albanianologists, renaissance, clergy, teachers, politicians, graphomaniacs, dictators, agitators…, but also human history from the rarest, that we can touch and live only through books.

It would be enough for each of us to experience among the particles of memory that part that connects with our National Library, I am convinced that in many of you, present here today,

strong>the emotion of this exhibition goes as far as national pride and personal connection with the Library.

Because this temple,is part of our cultural heritage, our heritage in the field of letters, but also our known and unknown, national and even intimate history..</ strong>

And this exhibition is just a piece of a dream that we can touch today. There are several sitars, many of which are opened today for the first time, not as an institutional obligation to celebrate an anniversary, but as a continuation of the thousand-year-old narrative, which tells us that we find paradise to the written word.

This word today travels in time and comes to us, in this celebration, in new spaces, it finds itself here, in the temple of governance, to travel with our promise to a new temple , deserved, that of the new National Library.

The ceremony to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Library should have been held on a much larger scale, as I don’t believe there is another cultural institution with such dimensions in preserving the national identity.

There are many people who have contributed to the brick by brick placement of this temple, which, like the history of Albania, has sometimes been crossed by fatality, such as also this pandemic.

And surely some of those who are still alive today deserved to be here in the first place…I take the opportunity to thank them for their dedication and work them in unusual times.

A part of these books that are exhibited today have the letter “R” on their backs. They were forbidden, reserved books… Even the first Albanian book, Meshari was skimmed over in textbooks, as if it were a second-hand event. Why? Because a cleric brought the holy word to Albanian.

But the library will certainly have other anniversaries, grand as it deserves,though I find it highly symbolic, that the books, which were banned by order, from this very building , are exhibited here, marking a double opening to the public.

And it is again the library that makes another dream possible.

Happy century of happy life and many more after us, in another temple, where her timeless works are preserved!</strong >