In the wake of daily work to the function of maintaining and improving the signage of cultural assets, the specialists of the Cultural Heritage Shkodër Regional Directorate have completed the installation of the bilingual informative panel in the building of “Saint Gjin” Church, a category I cultural monument, since 1977.

The Church of “Saint Gjin” is located in Gruemira of Malësia e Madhe, north of Shkodër.

Referring to archival data and the size of the object, we have to do with a monastery that belonged to the Benedictine Order.

A first document from 1166 mentions the abbot of the church of Sancti Johannis (Saint John in Lower Rash). In the middle ages, the abbey was under the protection of the dynasties of Drishti and in later time of the Republic of Venice.

In another source dating back to 1356, it is written that the Bishop of Balesium (Balleza, Rrjoll) received as a gift the Benedictine Monastery of Saint Gjin in Rrash, after  the death of the last abbot Andreas, it had remained vacant. Also in the middle of the 14-th century, it is described as a monastery damaged by those who favored the schism and the lands around it together with the abandoned church passed to the Bishop of Basilica.

A decree of the Venetian Senate of 1403 shows the Abbey of Saint Gjin was exempted from tithe.

The monastery was finally abandoned in 1628. The Ottoman governor of Shkodër, Abdi Pasha, in 1856 declared it a state land and forbade the other two faiths to hold services there.

The Church remains today a historical memory.

/a.p./