Things to Do in Prizren, Kosovo

Quick facts: Stones from a 14th-century imperial monastery sit in the walls, a reuse that gives the building a history far older than its construction year of 1615. The lead-clad dome and the slender minaret tower over the old town center and are visible from almost every street.

Highlights: The hand-painted floral and arabesque patterns from the 19th century on the upper wall light up when the afternoon sun hits them, a detail few notice at first glance. In the courtyard stands the tombstone of the man who raised the entire building, and there you can still see locals light candles and leave prayers.

Quick facts: From the top you turn your gaze out over the city's red roofs, the river's winding course and a mountain range that reaches 2,500 meters, a view that made sense to the builders for well over a thousand years. The walls stretch over more than two hectares in three defensive levels, where Byzantine remains from the 6th century meet Ottoman additions from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Highlights: Excavations have uncovered coins, ceramics and jewelry from more than twenty different cultures, layered in the ground like a cake where the Byzantines, Serbs and Ottomans have all left their mark. On the square by the east tower, archaeologists found remains of a smithy with intact tools and crucibles in 2016, so you can stand exactly where craftsmen once worked.

Quick facts: Over 1,000 square meters of 14th-century frescoes cover the interior, and the paintings are considered among the finest of Serbian medieval art. The building has changed identity many times: church, mosque for several centuries, and church again from the 20th century.

Highlights: Under the 14th-century frescoes lie older layers of paint from two earlier churches on the same plot, and archaeologists uncovered them layer by layer. The figure of Christ in the dome has dark, intense eyes that seem to follow you no matter where you stand, surrounded by blue and red colors that still glow.

Quick facts: In a small complex of stone halls, up to 300 delegates from 47 different cities met in the summer of 1878 to lay plans for Albanian self-determination. The buildings first served as a madrasa, and the original meeting rooms are preserved exactly as they were back then.

Highlights: The most atmospheric moment comes in the innermost stone hall, where the wooden benches still stand in the same circle as in 1878 and you can let your hand glide over the table's worn surface. In the corner hang the original banners and the original telegrams sent between the meetings, with handwriting you can read right up against the glass.

Quick facts: The river Lumbardhi rushes under the three stone arches with a roar that can be heard across the entire old quarter. The walkway surface is polished smooth by footsteps through several centuries, and the wide railing edges invite people to sit down and rest.

Highlights: Local legend tells that the bridge builder's wife was walled into the arch to keep the river in check, and some claim you can hear her song in the rush of the water. Around midnight, young couples gather here to whisper wishes down into the water, a custom that supposedly has given the bridge the nickname "the love mill" among locals.

Quick facts: The spring water that gushes out here stays around 10 degrees all year, and locals fill thousands of bottles straight from the taps along the path every day. In summer the stream is so cold that children can't stand more than a few minutes in the water before they jump out again and laugh.

Highlights: Local families dunk whole watermelons down into the spring streams to cool them before the evening meal, a little habit you only see here. After sunset, the lantern lights dance in the water's surface, and you hear the river rush while grill smoke mixes with the warm summer air.

Quick facts: The whitewashed walls hide a lavish Catholic interior where marbled veins are painted directly on plaster and make the eye believe everything is carved in stone. The restoration in the 1970s saved the room after it had served as a furniture warehouse and cinema for several decades.

Highlights: The decorations are a little trick: the columns look like marble and the altar like stone, but it is all brushwork on dry plaster, done in the 19th century to imitate more expensive materials. The afternoon light makes the fake veins glow, so you have to go over and feel with your finger to believe it.

Quick facts: The 17 domes of varying sizes cover one single connected bath complex of around 900 square meters. Here it steamed with hot bathwater right up until 1944, and after war damage and an extensive EU-funded restoration, the complex reopened as a museum in 2016.

Highlights: Men and women separated into two completely distinct wings, each with its own entrance, its own cold water pool and separate changing rooms under the same 17 domes. Look up for the hexagonal openings in the ceiling, they let in soft daylight into the steam-filled stone hall and are still intact after over 400 years.