Dr. Vasil Laboviti House

This residence, recognisable by its neoclassical style and the plaque reading “Dr. Vasil Laboviti, Surgeon-Gynaecologist”, once served both as his home and his medical practice. Born in 1902 and trained at the University of Graz in Austria, Dr Laboviti became one of the most respected doctors in southern Albania. A surgeon and gynaecologist, he is said to have carried out more than forty thousand operations during his career and to have directed the region’s main hospital for nearly twenty years. But what truly made him a legendary figure in Gjirokastër happened during the Second World War. In 1943 or 1944, after two German soldiers were wounded by partisans, the occupying forces decided, as retaliation, to execute eighty local residents. Thanks to his fluent German and his position as a doctor, Dr Laboviti invited the Nazi commander into this very house, treated the wounded soldiers and, through conversation, authority and moral conviction, succeeded in having the mass execution cancelled, saving dozens of lives. This extraordinary act, rooted both in the Hippocratic Oath and in remarkable civic courage, earned him immense respect and the nickname “Vasil the Great”. The writer Ismail Kadare later drew inspiration from this episode for his novel The Fall of the Stone City, where the doctor appears under the name Dr Gurameto, turning a true story into a powerful meditation on humanism in wartime. Today, the house is not open as a museum, but it remains a place of strong collective memory, a quiet yet powerful reminder of a man whose actions saved lives and left a lasting mark on the history of the city.