If you ask most people, they will tell you that Prizren is the best city to visit in Kosovo. While I did love my visit to that city, I have to disagree. For me, that would be Peja. However, Prizren is certainly quite unique, so I can understand why this touristic town may seem like the best Kosovo has to offer. Let us now see what a weary traveller can see in this gem of a town.
While Prizren is mostly known for its ethnic Albanian and Turkish population, it has, or more likely had a sizeable Christian population as well. Unfortunately, nowadays, this part of the city’s life seems to have ended for the most part. I really wanted to visit the Serbian Cathedral Mother of God of Ljeviš, but its perimeters were firmly shut down and protected with some painful looking fences.
While the city’s Serbian and thus Christian part may not exist anymore, everything else seems to be in place. Much like Berat in Albania, it offers a rather beautiful river that divides the city in half, and a few decent Ottoman era houses known for their white exterior and plenty of windows.
A closer look at these houses made me realize that while they certainly looked unique from afar, most of them seem to have been renovated quite recently, meaning that they are not all as old as one may think at first. I suppose that may have been the case in Berat as well. While it would have been nice to have a few intact Ottoman houses that lasted for a few centuries, the reality is that in such a long time they must have been damaged quite badly, which is only natural.
Nevertheless, these white houses with frankly far too many windows are the trademark of ex-Ottoman towns in this part of the world. I suppose at some point most cities in the region had a similar architecture, but only a few could really latch on to them and made them survive to this day, which resulted in these few spots becoming tourist hot spots today. It goes without saying that I met a ridiculous number of Turkish tourists here in just one short day, all of which came to see the Ottoman architecture the city has to offer today.
Yet another reason some people visit Prizren is its fortress, well, the views from the fortress. On your way up there, you will come across a few beautiful cafes, churches, and houses. Sadly, the churches I chanced upon were certainly closed off to the public.
Eventually, you will get to the top of the stairs, and arrive at the fortress itself. Honestly, this area hardly offers much to its few visitors. While the fortress looks nice from below, it is empty on the inside. There may be a museum here at some point, but even then, it would be a tiny one at best. The main attraction here is just to get up to the walls and take a look around.
Admittedly, you will see some pretty views, mainly that of Prizren, from atop. However, since most of what the city offers are those white houses, and since you cannot see their white sides from atop, this is, arguably, not the ideal way of looking at the city. I am probably a bit fussy about all of this because half the path up to the fortress was left without proper footing, and almost all of it lacked any cover against the sun, natural or otherwise. This turns what would normally be a very short and sweet walk into a rather problematic climb in the middle of July. Nevertheless, while we hardly saw anyone else up there, I suppose if you do end up visiting Prizren, it would not hurt to see it from atop.
On the way back from the fortress, I realized something bizarre was going on with the manholes. They all looked different from one another. As if they were made at different factories. Well, apparently, they were brought from different cities! This one had Skopje written on it, and some others had other town names on them. This was not the case in Pristina, at least I have not noticed any such oddities. Perhaps this is more prevalent in smaller cities where tiny budgets could better be put to use elsewhere than producing city-branded manholes.
Yet another quirkiness you will come across in Prizren is the fact that it is a trilingual society, at least on paper. Street signs have RR. for rruga, UL. for ulitsa, and SK. for sokak, words meaning “street” in Albanian, Serbian, and Turkish respectively. It was a very welcome change to see, not because I get to see some street signs (and many other writing) in Turkish, but because none of them seemed to be vandalised. Admittedly, most Serbian signage in Pristina has seen better days.
While the city is and was very multi-ethnic, it is perhaps best known as the birthing place of the Albanian nation, or at least its political foundation in 1878.
A group of Ottoman-Albanian statesmen and intelligentsia gathered in this beautiful town by the end of the 20th century, frustrated by the direction Ottoman Empire was heading. They deemed it necessary to create an Albanian nation state to better secure the needs of the locals and thus formed the League of Prizren in this part of the town.
This was apparently the exact same building they used to sign the first legal document pertaining to the founding of an Albanian nation state. It is kept clean and well renovated, and there is a tiny museum to check out on its upper floor.
I would have appreciated a richer museum dedicated to Albanian history and Albanian nationalist cause somewhere in Prizren, alas it seems that such an undertaking was not attempted yet. With that being said, for those interested in the topic, this small museum still offers a few interesting bits and pieces to look at.
As I mentioned before, the city is home to three communities, and thus three languages. I heard Albanian and a rather different, may I say Balkan version of Turkish quite frequently, whereas there were as many Serbian speakers as one could find in an ordinary street in Istanbul. By that I mean very little if any. I am not sure if that was always the case, or if things changed after the conflict in 1990s, but I assume it is the latter.
Eventually, I needed a refuel. I heard of a decent seafood restaurant not far from the Turkish bath as it is seen above. Thankfully, the humbly named Fish House with its fantastic staff and even better food was just around the corner!
While their Turkish speaking local staff was already a surprise for us, the house salad we ordered in Fish House took us by much surprise. This was no ordinary salad. While the veggies were fresh and the tuna on top was plenty, it was the sauce that really elevated it to the status of a full-blown dish in my book.
Then, we received our fries topped with cheese, which turned out to pack a punch. While the fries themselves were nothing special, the Sharr cheese on top turned out to be rather sharp and salty. It was everything I could possibly ask for at that point, as it went perfectly with the beer. We even used the non-cheesy fries to mop up the salad’s juice at the end, which was divine to say the least.
Well, while we were already pretty full thanks to all those unexpectedly good appetizers, the fried sardines came in just the right time to be the crowning jewel of the meal. They were fried perfectly and were fully edible thanks to their tiny bones. While some were surprised to see me devour an entire small fish in one bite, you yourself will want to do that once you start eating one of these flavour bombs. Perfectly cooked, perfectly served, and just perfectly priced. While it may seem unusual for some to enjoy seafood in an inland city, it sure worked wonders in this case!
Quite satisfied, to say the least, I then stumbled upon a nearby mosque and tekke complex. It was not even on my list, so I have very little information about it, but this ornate faucet was reason enough to visit the area briefly.
Ultimately, I made my way back to the more Ottoman looking part of the city, to take a look at Sinan Pasha Mosque. This 1615 mosque was not the grandest on the outside, but the interior is a different story. While it is not as colourful as the Colourful Mosque in Macedonia’s Tetovo, it nonetheless offers a sight to behold.
With its beautiful mosque, wonderful views, friendly locals, and superb Fish House, Prizren is indeed a city you should not skip if you are in the region. To my mountain and forest loving heart, the best part of Kosovo will remain Peja, but even I must admit that Prizren offers more to see and do for most travellers.