House of Leaves Museum

The House of Leaves is the villa on the boulevard behind the Orthodox cathedral where Albania's secret police ran its surveillance operation for most of the com…The House of Leaves is the villa on the boulevard behind the Orthodox cathedral where Albania's secret police ran its surveillance operation for most of the communist era. The building began in 1931 as a private clinic, was taken over during the occupation, and then spent decades as the place where phones were tapped, letters were read and informers were debriefed, its facade hidden by the creeper that gives it its name.

The exhibition shows the equipment and the paper trail: bugs, cameras, intercept logs and files on the citizens watched. It is the most direct account in the capital of how the regime policed private life, and audio guides are offered in several languages.