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Albanian: Prizren or Prizreni
Serbian: Призрен or Prizren
City and municipality
From top (left to right):  Prizren old town, the fortress, Old Stone Bridge, Prizren, Sinan Pasha Mosque, Prizren League Building, Shadervan Square,  Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Gazi Mehmet Pasha Hammam, Our Lady of Ljeviš and a panoramic view of the city seen from the fortress during the evening.
From top (left to right):
Prizren is located in Kosovo
Location in Kosovo
Country Kosovo[a]
District District of Prizren
 • Mayor Ramadan Muja
 • City and municipality 640 km2 (250 sq mi)
 • Urban 22.390 km2 (8.645 sq mi)
Elevation 450 m (1,480 ft)
Population (2014)
 • City and municipality 184,586
 • Density 290/km2 (750/sq mi)
Time zone CET (UTC+1)
 • Summer (DST) CEST (UTC+2)
Postal code 20000-20080
Area code(s) (+383) 29
Car plates 04
Climate Cfb
Website Municipality of Prizren

Prizren (Albanian: Prizreni, Serbian: Призрен; pronounced [prîzrɛn]) is a historic city located in Kosovo.[a] It is the administrative center of the eponymous municipality and district. The city has a population of around 178,000 (2011 census preliminary results),[1] making it the second largest city in Kosovo. The residents of Prizren are mostly ethnic Albanians. Prizren is located on the banks of a river, the Prizren Bistrica, and on the slopes of the Šar Mountains (Albanian: Malet e Sharrit) in the southern part of the Republic of Kosovo. The municipality has a border with Albania and the Republic of Macedonia.[2]




Main article: Theranda

The Roman[3] town of Theranda in Ptolemy's Geography is mentioned in the 2nd century AD. In the 5th century, it is mentioned as being restored in Dardania with the name of Petrizên by Procopius of Caesarea in De aedificiis (Book IV, Chapter 4).[4] Sometimes it is mentioned even in relation to the Justiniana Prima.[citation needed] It is thought that its modern name comes from old Serbian Призрѣнь (Prizren), from при-зрѣти (pri-zreti), indicating fortress which could be seen from afar[5] (compare with Czech Přízřenice or mount Ozren), and it may also derive from Petrizen mentioned by Procopius.[6]


Konstantin Jireček concluded, from the correspondence of bishop Demetrios Chomatenos of Ohrid (1216–36), that Prizren was the northeasternmost area of Albanian settlement prior to the Slavic expansion.[7]

Stefan Dušan used Prizren as capital of Serbian Empire

Bulgarian rulers controlled the Prizren area from the 850s, and Slav migrants arriving in the area were subsequently influenced by the Bulgarian-organized Archbishopric of Ohrid (est. 1018). Bulgarian rule was replaced by Byzantine rule in the early eleventh century.[8][better source needed]

In 1072, the Bulgarian and Serb nobility of Macedonia rose up against the Byzantines, and crowned Serbian ruler Constantine Bodin, a descendant of the Serbian Vojislavljević dynasty, as Emperor of Bulgaria in Prizren. The revolt was suppressed by 1073.[9] The area was raided by Serbian ruler Vukan in the 1090s.[10]

Prizren Assembly before Battle of Kosovo

In 1180–90, the Serbian Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja conquered "the district of Prizren"[11] this may refer to the Prizren diocese rather than the city itself, and he later lost control of these areas.[12] Stefan Nemanja regained control of Prizren some time between 1208 and 1216. In 1220, the Byzantine Greek Orthodox bishop of the city was expelled as the Serbian rulers imposed their own ecclesiastical jurisdiction.[13] Stefan Dušan used Prizren as capital of Serbian Empire.[14][15] In the next centuries before the Ottoman conquest the city would pass to the Mrnjavčević and Balsić families.

The Catholic church retained some influence in the area; 14th-century documents refer to a catholic church in Prizren, which was the seat of a bishopric between the 1330s and 1380s. Catholic parishes served Ragusan merchants and Saxon miners.[16]

Ottoman Period[edit]

Main article: Prizren Vilayet

After several years of attack and counterattack, the Ottomans made a major invasion of Kosovo in 1454; Đurađ Branković retreated to the north and asked for help from John Hunyadi. On 21 June 1455, Prizren surrendered to the Ottoman army.[17] Prizren was the capital of the Sanjak of Prizren, and under new administrative organization of Ottoman Empire it became capital of the Vilayet.[18] This included the city of Tetovo.[19] Later it became a part of the Ottoman province of Rumelia. It was a prosperous trade city, benefiting from its position on the north-south and east-west trade routes across the Empire. Prizren became one of the larger cities of the Ottomans' Kosovo Province (vilayet).


Prizren was an important part of Kosovo Vilayet between 1877 and 1912. During the late 19th century the city became a focal point for Albanian nationalism and saw the creation in 1878 of the League of Prizren, a movement formed to seek the national unification and liberation of Albanians within the Ottoman Empire.

The Young Turk Revolution was a step in the dissolving of the Ottoman empire that led to the Balkan Wars. The Third Army (Ottoman Empire) had a division in Prizren, the 30th Reserve Infantry Division (Otuzuncu Pirzerin Redif Fırkası).


Kingdom of Serbia[edit]


During the First Balkan War the city was seized by the Serbian army and incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbia[citation needed]. Although the troops met little resistance, the takeover was bloody with 400 people dead in the first few days; the local population would call the city 'The Kingdom of Death'.[20] The Daily Chronicle reported on 12 November 1912 that 5,000 Albanians had been slaughtered in Prizren.[20] General Božidar Janković forced the local Albanian leaders to sign a declaration of gratitude to King Peter of Serbia for their 'liberation by the Serbian army.'[20][21] Following the capture of Prizen, most foreigners were barred from entering the city, for the Montenegrin forces temporarily closed the city before full control was restored. A few visitors did make it through—including Leon Trotsky, then working as a journalist for a Ukrainian newspaper and reports eventually emerged of widespread killings of Albanians.[22] In a 1912 news report on the Serbian Army and the Paramilitary Chetniks in Prizren, Trotsky stated "Among them were intellectuals, men of ideas, nationalist zealots, but these were isolated individuals. The rest were just thugs, robbers who had joined the army for the sake of loot... The Serbs in Old Serbia, in their national endeavour to correct data in the ethnographical statistics that are not quite favourable to them, are engaged quite simply in systematic extermination of the Muslim population".[23] British traveller Edith Durham and a British military attaché were supposed to visit Prizren in October 1912, however the trip was prevented by the authorities. Durham stated " I asked wounded Montengrins [Soldiers] why I was not allowed to go and they laughed and said 'We have not left a nose on an Albanian up there!' Not a pretty sight for a British officer." Eventually Durham visited a northern Albanian outpost in Kosovo where she met captured Ottoman soldiers whose upper lips and noses had been cut off.[23]



World War I[edit]

With the outbreak of the First World War, the Kingdom of Serbia was invaded by Austro-Hungarian forces and later by Bulgarian forces. By 29 November 1915, Prizren fell to Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian forces.[26] In April 1916, Austria-Hungary allowed the Kingdom of Bulgaria to occupy the city with the understanding that a significant amount of the city's population were ethnic Bulgarians.[27] During this period there was a process of forced Bulgarisation with many Serbs being interned; Serbs suffered worse in Bulgarian occupied regions of Kosovo compared to Austrian occupied regions due to the Bulgarian defeat in the Second Balkan War and due to the long-standing rivalry between the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church.[28] According to Catholic Archbishop of Skopje, Lazër Mjeda who was taking refuge in Prizren at the time, roughly 1,000 people had died of hunger in 1917. In October 1918 following the fall of Macedonia to Allied Forces, the Serbian Army along with the French 11th colonial division and the Italian 35th Division pushed the Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian forces out of the city.[28] By the end of 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed. The Kingdom was renamed in 1929 to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Prizren became a part of its Vardar Banovina.

World War II[edit]

Ballist forces in Prizren, 1944

In World War II Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941 and by 9 April the Germans who had invaded Yugoslavia from the East with neighbouring Bulgaria as base were on the outskirts of Prizren and by 14 April Prizren had fallen to the Italians who had invaded Yugoslavia from the West in neighbouring Albania; there was however notable resistance in Prizen before Yugoslavia unconditionally surrendered on 19 April 1941.[29] Prizren along with most of Kosovo was annexed to the Italian puppet state of Albania. Soon after the Italian occupation, the Albanian Fascist Party established a blackshirt battalion in Prizren, but plans to establish two more battalions were dropped due to the lack of public support.[30]

In 1943 Bedri Pejani of the German Wehrmacht helped create the Second League of Prizren.[31]

Federal Yugoslavia[edit]

View of the city September 1863 taken by Viennese photographer Josef Székely [32]

In 1944, German forces were driven out of Kosovo by a combined Russian-Bulgarian force, and then the Communist government of Yugoslavia took control.[33] In 1946, the town was formulated as a part of Kosovo and Metohija which the Constitution defined the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija within the People's Republic of Serbia, a constituent state of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia.



Kosovo War[edit]

Destroyed Serbian quarter of Prizren



The war and its aftermath caused only a moderate amount of damage to the city compared to other cities in Kosovo.[35] Serbian forces destroyed an important Albanian cultural monument in Prizren, the League of Prizren building,[36][37] but the complex was rebuilt later on and now constitutes the Albanian League of Prizren Museum.

On March 17, 2004, during the Unrest in Kosovo some Serb cultural monuments in Prizren were damaged, burned or destroyed, such as old Orthodox Serb churches:

Also, during that riot, entire Serb quarter of Prizren, near the Prizren Fortress, was completely destroyed, and all remaining Serb population was evicted from Prizren.[39][40] Simultaneously Islamic cultural heritage and Mosques were being destroyed and damaged in Belgrade and Niš.[41]

21st century[edit]


Panorama of Prizren from the Castle


Main article: Geography of Prizren


Climate data for Prizren
Record high °C (°F) 20.2
Average high °C (°F) 3.3
Daily mean °C (°F) 0.0
Average low °C (°F) −3.0
Record low °C (°F) −23.6
Average precipitation mm (inches) 76.2
Average relative humidity (%) 81 75 68 64 64 61 58 59 67 74 79 82 69
Source: Republic Hydrometeorological Service of Serbia[42]


The old city of Prizren

As in other cities of the Balkans that underwent Ottoman urban development, the population largely converted to Islam in the 16th century, although part of the former Catholic converts professed a form of crypto-Christianity (laramanë). An aspect of this new urban character is evidenced by the demographics of workshop owners; 227 of 246 workshops of Prizren were run by Muslims in 1571.[43] As the Catholic population dwindled, prelatic missions and reports in the region increased. Marino Bizzi, Archbishop of Antivari, in his 1610 report stated that Prizren had 8.600 large houses.[44] The Christian part of the city was formed by Catholics (30 households), whose churches had been reduced to two (from a total of 80), and Orthodox, who outnumbered them and spoke the Dalmatian language.[44] In 1623, Pjetër Mazreku, who in 1624 succeeded Bizzi as Archbishop of Antivari, reported that the city was populated mostly by Muslims, who numbered 12,000 and were mostly Albanians.[45] The Catholics of the city spoke Albanian and Slavic and 200 of them were Albanians.[45][46] The Orthodox element was composed of 600 Serbs.[45] In 1857, Russian Slavist Alexander Hilferding's publications place the Muslim families at 3,000, the Orthodox ones at 900 and the Catholics at around 100 families.[47] The Ottoman census of 1876, placed the total population at around 44,000.

Ref: OSCE .pdf
[dead link]

Official languages[edit]

In Prizren Municipality, the Albanian, Serbian, Bosnian and Turkish languages are official languages.[48][49]




Main article: Education in Prizren









Main article: Culture in Prizren

Prizren is home to the annually held documentary film festival Dokufest.

The city is also home to numerous mosques, Orthodox and Catholic churches and other monuments. Among them:


These monuments, part of the historic center of the city, have recently been threatened by development pressures.[51] In addition, war, fires, general dilapidation and neglect have taken their toll on this unique architectural landscape.[52]

Name Description Picture
The Shadervan Turkish: Şadırvan is a tourist area on the south side of town, there are numerous cafes and restaurants there. The ancient water fountain is a protected cultural monument, there is a legend that if you drink from it you will be sure to come back.[53][54][55] Şadırvan - Prizren 01.jpg
The Tannery/Leatherworks in Prizren (Albanian: Lagjia e Tabakëve, Bosnian: Prizrenska Tabahana[56] )[57] is an ancient handcraft building. Tabakëve is the Albanian, and табахана the Serbian version, both from Turkish: 'tr:Tabakhane', where -ana means house.[58]
1534 (1543?) Mosque of Kuklibeu (Albanian: Xhamia e Kuklibeut, originating from Turkish: Kutlu Bey Camii) also known as Kukli Bej Mosque PrizrenCollection2 2010 IMG 0695.JPG
Mosque of Mustafe Pashe Prizrenit (Turkish: Prizrenli Mustafa Paşa Camii, Albanian: Xhamia e Mustafë Pashë Prizrenit/Xhamia e Mustafa Pashës). 1562–1563 Destroyed in 1950 after a storm. It was located at the location of the former UNMIK headquarters, now municipality building 42°12′36″N 20°44′11″E﻿ / ﻿42.210060°N 20.736372°E﻿ / 42.210060; 20.736372﻿ (municipality building prizren)
1543–1581 Mosque of Muderis Ali Efendi (Turkish: Müderris Ali Efendi Camii) PrizrenCollection2 2010 100 2517.JPG
The Sinan Pasha Mosque (Albanian: Xhamia e Sinan Pashës, Bosnian: Sinan-pašina džamija, Turkish: Sinan Paşa Camii) is an Ottoman mosque in the city of Prizren, Kosovo.[a] It was built in 1615 by Sofi Sinan Pasha, bey of Budim.[59] The mosque overlooks the main street of Prizren and is a dominant feature in the town's skyline.[60] SinanPasha.JPG
Minaret of Arasta Mosque

Events and festivals[edit]

NGOM Fest[edit]

Main article: NGOM Fest



Main article: 40BunarFest

40BunarFest is an annual non traditional festival of alternative sport held in Prizren.

International relations[edit]

Twin towns – Sister cities[edit]

Prizren is twinned with:

Notable people[edit]

See also[edit]

Notes and references[edit]




  4. ^*.html
  9. ^ Byzantium's Balkan frontier, p. 142; Scylitzes Continuatus: 163
  10. ^ Fine 1994, p. 226.
  11. ^ Fine 1994, p. 7.
  12. ^ Novaković, R (1966). "O nekim pitanjima područja današnje Metohije krajem XII i početkom XIII veka". Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta. 9: 195–215. 
  14. ^ Sandwith, Humphry (1865). Notes on the South Slavonic Countries in Austria and Turkey in Europe: Containing Historical and Political Information Added to the Substance of a Paper Read at the Meeting of the British Association at Bath, 1864. p. 52. 
  15. ^ Vickers, Miranda (1995). The Albanians: A Modern History. p. 97. 
  18. ^[dead link]
  19. ^ Archived from the original on July 15, 2011. Retrieved January 2, 2011.  Missing or empty |title= (help)
  20. ^ a b c Freundlich, Leo (1913). "Albania's Golgotha". Archived from the original on 31 May 2012. Retrieved 29 June 2014. 
  21. ^ Lazër Mjeda (24 January 1913). "Report on the Serb Invasion of Kosova and Macedonia". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 29 June 2014. 
  22. ^ "Prizren history". 
  24. ^ "Prizren history". Archived from the original on 1970-01-01. 
  32. ^
  36. ^ Andras Riedlmayer, Harvard University Kosovo Cultural Heritage Survey
  38. ^ a b c d e f g "Reconstruction Implementation Commission". Site on protection list. Archived from the original on 27 July 2011. Retrieved 9 December 2010. 
  41. ^
  45. ^ a b c . Gjurmime albanologjike: Seria e shkencave historike. 1. Albanological Institute of Pristina. 1972  Missing or empty |title= (help)
  48. ^ Diplomatic Observer Official Language
  49. ^ OSCE Implementation of the Law on the Use of Languages by Kosovo Municipalities
  50. ^ a b c "Bosnia and herzegovina republika srpska national assembly elections" (PDF). Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. 1997-11-22/23. p. 32. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 6, 2011. Retrieved 2008-03-27.  Check date values in: |date= (help)
  55. ^ just a mention of the legend
  56. ^ "Kosovo and Metohija". Retrieved 2012-03-12. 
  60. ^ "Cultural Heritage in Kosovo" (PDF). UNESCO. Retrieved August 6, 2010. 
  61. ^
  62. ^

External links[edit]