Kosovo

Kosovo fills a landlocked upland basin in the central Balkans, ringed by mountains: the Accursed Mountains on the west, the Šar range on the south and Kopaonik on the north. Two plains hold most of its farms and towns. Dukagjin in the west drains through the White Drin towards the Adriatic, while the Kosovo plain in the east, the Field of Blackbirds, drains north into the Danube basin, so the territory sits on a watershed between two seas.

Illyrian Dardanians, Romans and Byzantines held the land before it became the heart of medieval Serbia, whose Orthodox monasteries at Dečani, Gračanica and the Patriarchate of Peć are on UNESCO’s list. The Battle of Kosovo, fought on the Field of Blackbirds in 1389, opened the way to five centuries of Ottoman rule, during which Islam spread widely. In 1912 the region passed from Ottoman to Serbian rule, and it later formed part of Yugoslavia. After the war of 1998–99 it was placed under United Nations administration, and in 2008 its assembly declared independence.

Prizren’s old town, where a stone bridge crosses the Bistrica below Ottoman mosques and Orthodox churches, fills each August for a documentary film festival. Flija, thin layers of batter baked one by one under a metal lid over embers, takes most of a day to make. Farming, construction, coal-fired power from the lignite fields near Obiliq and remittances from relatives in Germany and Switzerland keep the economy going.