The Marubi National Photography Museum was created to preserve and promote the photographic archive of the Marubi dynasty and other local photographers, representing a unique part of Albania’s cultural heritage.

The museum centers on the legacy of the Marubi Photography Studio, founded in 1856 by Pietro Marubi, an Italian painter and photographer who settled in Shkodra. The studio was managed and expanded by three generations of photographers until the 1950s, when Gege Marubi became part of the collective communist photography unit.

By 1970, the archive contained around 500,000 negatives in various formats and techniques. Many historical photographs were later used for communist propaganda, sometimes altered or reproduced in official publications.