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Top cities and UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Kosovo.
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1
Prizren
The country's most beautiful town and the one everyone photographs: an Ottoman core of stone bridges and minarets stacked under a hilltop fortress, with the Bistrica running through the middle. Every August DokuFest turns the whole place into a documentary festival, screening films on rooftops, in the river and inside the ruined castle.
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2
Pristina
A young capital in a hurry, where the café density is startling and half the population seems to be under thirty. The National Library is among the most argued-over buildings in Europe — 99 domes and a full-body chain-mail shell — and the NEWBORN monument has been repainted every year since independence in 2008.
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3
Peja
Known as Peć in Serbian, this is the gateway to the Accursed Mountains and the best base for walking in western Kosovo. Its bazaar was rebuilt after the war, and the Patriarchate on the town's edge has been the spiritual seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church since the 13th century.
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4
Rugova Canyon
A gorge running west from Peja for 25 kilometres between walls that rise over a kilometre, carved by the Lumbardh river. There is a via ferrata bolted to the cliffs, a zipline across the void, and in winter frozen waterfalls that draw ice climbers from across the region.
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5
Gjakova
Home to the Çarshia e Madhe, among the oldest and largest bazaars in the Balkans, burned in 1999 and painstakingly rebuilt in timber and stone. The Hadum Mosque at its heart dates from the 1590s and survived alongside it.
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6
Visoki Dečani Monastery
A 14th-century Serbian Orthodox monastery below the mountains, holding the largest surviving cycle of Byzantine frescoes anywhere — more than a thousand distinct compositions on its walls. It has been guarded continuously since 1999, and visits require showing a passport at the gate.
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7
Bjeshkët e Nemuna National Park
The Accursed Mountains, shared with Albania and Montenegro, and the finest hiking country in the western Balkans. The Peaks of the Balkans trail loops through all three countries across roughly 190 kilometres, using shepherds' huts and village guesthouses.
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8
Patriarchate of Peć
Four churches built against one another under a single narthex, set where the Rugova gorge opens out. The seat of the Serbian Patriarchs from the 14th century, its frescoes and the mulberry tree in the courtyard have outlasted every administration that has governed here since.
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9
Brezovica
Kosovo's ski resort, high in the Sharr Mountains at around 1,700 metres, used as a training base for the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. The infrastructure is dated and the snow is not, which is exactly why ski tourers keep coming.
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10
Gračanica
A monastery of five domes on a compact cross plan, finished around 1321 and considered the most refined thing King Milutin ever built. It sits in a Serb-majority village a short drive from Pristina, which makes it the easiest of the four medieval monuments to reach.
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11
Sharr Mountains National Park
A long range along the southern border, grazed in summer by shepherds moving flocks to high pasture and home to lynx, bear and the Sharr dog bred to fight off wolves. Prevalla, the pass above Prizren, is the usual way in.
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12
Mirusha Waterfalls
The Mirusha river drops through a limestone canyon in a chain of sixteen falls and pools, the largest of them plunging into a natural amphitheatre. It is a swimming spot in high summer and largely empty the rest of the year.
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13
Rahovec
Known as Orahovac in Serbian, this is Kosovo's wine country — hillsides of vineyards that supplied much of Yugoslavia and are now being replanted for quality rather than volume. The grape harvest festival each September is the town's calendar highlight.
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14
Novo Brdo
A ruined fortress on a volcanic ridge that guarded one of the richest silver and gold mines in medieval Europe, wealthy enough to mint its own coinage. Ragusan merchants ran the trade, and the site is still littered with slag from the smelting.
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15
Mitrovica
A city split by the Ibar, with the bridge between its Albanian south and Serb north the most contested hundred metres in the country. It is a sobering place to visit and, for anyone trying to understand Kosovo rather than just photograph it, an instructive one.
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16
Gadime Cave
Discovered by a farmer splitting rock in 1969, this limestone cave is known for aragonite crystals that grow sideways and even upwards against gravity. Roughly a kilometre is lit and open to visitors.
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17
Ulpiana
A Roman city that became an important Byzantine centre before an earthquake levelled it in 518, prompting Justinian to rebuild it under a new name. Excavations have uncovered gates, basilicas and a necropolis on the plain south of Pristina.
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18
Velika Hoča
A village of a few hundred people holding thirteen Orthodox churches and a winemaking tradition documented since the 14th century. Nearly every household still keeps a cellar.
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19
Germia Park
The forested hills on Pristina's eastern edge, where the city goes to walk, picnic and swim in an enormous open-air pool built in socialist times. It is the quickest escape from the capital's traffic and air.
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20
Gjilan
An eastern market town with a relaxed centre and a reputation for its sweets and its wood carving. It sees almost no foreign visitors, which is part of the appeal.