The hill above Laç, north of Tirana near the coast, already had a Franciscan house in 1349, the date of the first document that names it. An inscription recorded that Archbishop Giovanni Bruno of Antivari (Bar) consecrated the church on 2 December 1557; it was restored in 1605, found 'in order' and served by the friars by the apostolic visitor of 1672, damaged in the earthquake of 1853, and its hospice burned by the Germans in 1944. The saint is Anthony of Padua — Shna Ndou in the northern Albanian of the region — whose cult came with the Franciscans.
In 1967 Enver Hoxha's regime closed every church and mosque in Albania and declared the country the first atheist state in the world. The church at Laç was destroyed with dynamite that year, in the account of Vatican News; a local history puts the demolition across 1967–71, after the hill was made a military zone. People went on climbing the paths to kneel on the stones, in secret and at real risk.
On 13 June 1990, the feast of St. Anthony, believers from all four corners of Albania gathered openly around the stones of the shrine to pray — some months before the regime lifted its ban on religion at the end of that year. Rebuilding on the old foundations began in 1991, with a road up the hill and electricity; the new church was blessed in the mid-1990s (the sources differ on the year), and a convent for the Franciscan friars of the Albanian province was opened in 2004. The church belongs to the Archdiocese of Tiranë-Durrës.
The great days are the thirteen Tuesdays before the feast and the night of 12–13 June, when the friars say six or seven Masses a day and many pilgrims stay the night; blessed bread of St. Anthony is given out. Pilgrims climb on foot, light candles, leave photographs of those they pray for, and bring the clothes of sick children in the hope of their healing. They come as Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims and Bektashi — in 2021 Baba Edmond Brahimaj, head of the world Bektashi community, came to the feast.
What is not claimed here: the Church has made no judgement on any cure or favour at Laç, and none is presented as a miracle. The legend that the friars' building materials were carried each night to a cave on the hill, and a newspaper story of thirty-two soldiers paralysed after pulling down its walls, are told locally without any witness or document behind them. Pilgrim numbers in the press — a million and more a year — are estimates no one has counted.