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Rare portrait, recounting the life of Taqi Fundo, the last aristocrat of the city of Korça

2025-12-05 11:18:00, Kulturë Ilia Ballauri

Rare portrait, recounting the life of Taqi Fundo, the last aristocrat of the

A precious chapter of Korça's history comes to light through fragments from the work "My Yesterday's World. Korça as I Lived It", where the researcher and memoirist of the city, Ilia Ballauri, brings the portrait of one of the most special figures of Korça's citizenship: Taqi (Dhimitër) Lluka Fundo (1894–1980).

Taqi Fundo, the older brother of the intellectual Zai Fundo, but with a different mother, Evgjeni Gheorghi Shuken, from a wealthy Voskopje family with deep roots in the Austro-Hungarian emigration, is presented in these memoirs as a rare aristocrat, the last of a world that was disappearing.

Taqi Fundo comes to Ballaur's testimony as a man with broad European culture, knowledgeable in several languages, ancient and modern Greek, Turkish, French, Italian, and a reader of authors who were difficult to find in Korça at that time.

Ballauri describes a man with a sweet demeanor, noble appearance, sharp mind, and incomparable logic, who with his presence calmed everything.

Rich and a well-known merchant, Taqi Fundo brought to Korça Italian majolica stoves with the signature "Lluka Fundo e bijtë", which are still preserved today in several old houses.

But the descendant of a respectable Voskopoje family was hit hard by the communist regime: expropriated, seized, convicted, tortured and persecuted, losing everything, even his bread in the dark years of the so-called "Death Oven", which the older generation of Korça residents remember with horror.

By Ilia Ballauri

TAQI (DHIMITËR) LLUKA FUNDO. Extracted from the material in progress: “My world of yesterday. Korça as I lived it” (Memories, events, impressions, impressions, thoughts, sketches, etc.) (Volume 2)

Taqi (Dhimitër) Lluka Fundo, (1894 - 1980) was the older brother of Zai Fundo, but with another mother, Evgjeni Gjeorgji Shuken, from a well-known, wealthy Voskopoja family, with early emigration to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Taqi, was married to Eftiqia Stavraq Ballaurin, the daughter of my father's first cousin. Taqi belonged to the people of the close circle, of my father's family.

I knew Taqi from close quarters, when he was an old man in his 70s-80s and until he died; I was 19-26 at the time. I have spoken about him elsewhere and I see it appropriate to write a few words again in these early memories of mine.

Taqi was probably one of the last aristocrats that I managed to get to know in my life, with a special culture, with a sweet demeanor and an elegant speech, with a facial expression that calmed everything, with a sharp mind and an incomparable logic, I have Taqi in front of me even now that I am writing these lines. He was a connoisseur of several Greek languages, old and new, Turkish, French, Italian, including Vlach, which he spoke with all its melodiousness. He had a level that he read even at that time in Korça, Otto Weininger, Luther Burbank, issues of hormonology, etc., etc. Taqi Fundo, who hated communism to its core, had a free, strong and indomitable spirit. He had suffered in prisons, where he was tortured and hit with boots, on the head and face. He was a rich merchant who filled Korça with majolica stoves, brought from Italy, with his initials or stamp “Lluka Fundo and his sons”, placed in the Italian factory, these stoves that are still found today in some old Korça families. He was dispossessed, seized, condemned, persecuted, despised, even without bread and hungry, during the terrible time of the “Death Oven”, in Korça that today, is not mentioned but that our parents trembled and cried when they remembered that type of oven, etc.

In recent years, when I got to know him closely, he lived in an improvised environment, built in the yard of Stavraq Ballaur's house, which he had turned into a tasteful environment, for me full of light and an environment where I learned things that were not taught anywhere else. In the last years of his life, his leg became gangrenous, it was amputated and he got around in a wheelchair, again with that look of his that calmed everything. From Taqi Fundo, I (as a fatherless child) learned a lot about Voskopoja, he instilled in me a love that I would never forget for this city, for the people who had lived there, Taqi helped me improve my Italian (as did the old chemist, Taqi Dimço, at the same time, for French). T. Fundo instilled in me a passion for agriculture, educated me to love freedom, justice, sweetness, to hate dictatorships, and above all, from him, I understood what the finesse of the soul is.

Taqi Fundo was the model of the best man, among the three or four that I have known throughout my life, until today, when I am 75 years old.

I regret to say that I was unable to find a photo of this man today, but he was handsome even when he was 80 years old./ CNA