The “House with Leaves” National Museum commemorated the poet, writer, and translator Petro Marko (November 25, 1913 – December 27, 1991).

Petro Marko was born on November 25, 1913, in the village of Dhërmi in Himara. He later became the head of the Commercial School of Vlora. On March 1, 1936, he published the inaugural issue of the literary fortnightly “ABC.” At the same year, he engaged in the Spanish Civil War alongside a group of forty Albanians, becoming part of the Garibaldi division of the International Brigades.

In Madrid, Petro Marko, together with Skënder Luarasi, commenced the publication of a twenty-page Albanian-language magazine titled “Volunteer of Freedom.” However, the magazine had a limited run, releasing only two issues.

In 1940, Petro Marko was compelled to return to his homeland from exile in France. A year later, he faced arrest by the Italians and was interned, along with six hundred other prisoners from the Balkan countries, on the island of Ustika in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

In October 1944, Petro Marko returned to Albania as a partisan. Following several years as the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Bashkimi,” in 1947, he was apprehended by the communist regime and incarcerated in Tirana. Upon the downfall of Koçi Xoxe’s regime, he was released and permitted to work as a teacher in Tirana. Subsequent to the publication of the novel “A Name in Four Streets” (Tirana, 1973), its circulation was prohibited for eight years. He passed away in Tirana on December 27, 1991.

/m.ll/