What’s the story of Zogu i Zi neighborhood

Everyone who lives in Tirana know where is the place we call “Zogu i Zi”. It is the roundabout in the entrance to the center of Tirana from Rruga e Durresit. One may wonder why people are calling this place 'Zogu i Zi'.  When this toponym is mentioned, often is accompanied by a smile, because several stories are invented about it. But the truth is that this name came after a public faucet which was decorated by a carved black bird on the top of it. This faucet existed years ago, and it was featured in a magazine in 1942.

The platform of the public faucet was made of stones, while a bird carved with black stone was its symbol. People living in the area were coming here every day to fill their bottles with water.  But there is also a legend about this spring water. In that place a young man died and buried there. Every day for a year his mother came and cried in that place. And after a year she died also. After that a black bird replaced her every day staying in her son’s grave. And there is also a song about this tragedy: a black bird is singing, in the grave of a young man… The villagers of the mother and son came here and build a tap-water sorrounding with black stones and on the top of it they carved a black bird.

This is the real story of this toponim. But later this place was linked with another story, which speaks for a brothel, which was visited mostly from the foreigners, especially by Italians after the years 1944. In fact the brothel was not in the same place, it was somewhere in what is today the Field Aviation close to Lana River. The story of that brothel which was not there for long, can’t substitute a legend and a real place that many citizens of Tirana knew from their ancestors.