Behind the famous mosaic (currently being renovated), the country's most important museum has three floors dedicated to individual social and political periods of Albanian history from its very beginnings through to the communist period. Despite only having decent English captions in the antiquity section, this museum has beautiful and unexpected surprises in abundance. Among the expected felt hats, pointy shoes and photographs of Ottoman-era Tirana before Enver Hoxha’s ideology and the bulldozers wrecked it, find some real treats, among them a red room with hundreds of Orthodox icons and the spectacularly named Pavilion of the National Liberation Antifascist War, which remains the only place in the city where you’ll find information on the amazing story of the Holocaust in Albania. The gift shop has books, traditional textiles and other souvenirs. With the addition of more explanations in English, this museum could become a genuinely outstanding one.