Photos from Our World

Prizreni, Europe's most oriental city

During the First Balkan War Prizreni was seized by the Serbian army and incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbia. Although the troops met little resistance, the takeover was bloody. The number of killed Albanians reached 400 to 4000. A few visitors did make it through - including Leon Trotsky, then working as a journalist - and reports eventually emerged of widespread killings of Albanians. One of the most vivid accounts was provided by the Catholic Archbishop of Skopje, who wrote an impassioned dispatch to the Pope on the dire conditions in Prizren immediately after its capture by Serbia: "The city seems like the Kingdom of Death. They knock on the doors of the Albanian houses, take away the men, and shoot them immediately. In a few days the number of men killed reached 400. As for plunder, looting and rape, all that goes without saying; henceforth, everything is permitted against the Albanians, not merely permitted but willed and commanded". Not much had changed in 1999.

With the invasion of the Kingdom of Serbia by Austro-Hungarian forces in 1915 during the First World War, the City was occupied by the Central Powers. The Serbian Army pushed the Central Powers out of the City in October 1918, restoring Montenegro's suzerainty. By the end of 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed - with Prizren a part of its historical territorial entity of Serbia. The Kingdom was renamed in 1929 "Kingdom of Yugoslavia" and Prizren became a part of its Banate of Vardar. The Axis Italian and Albanian forces conquered the City in 1941 during World War II; it was joined to the Italian puppet state of Albania. The Communists of Yugoslavia liberated it by 1944. It was then incorporated in "Kosovo and Metohija" (or Kosmet), under Democratic Serbia as a part of Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. The Constitution defined the Autonomous Region of Kosmet within the People's Republic of Serbia, a constituent state of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia.

For many years after the restoration of Serbian rule, Prizreni and the region of Deçani to the north west remained centres of Albanian nationalism. In 1956 the Yugoslav secret police put on trial in Prizren nine Kosovo Albanians accused of having been infiltrated into the country by the (hostile) Communist Albanian regime of Enver Hoxha. They were all convicted and sentenced to long prison sentences, but were released and declared innocent in 1968 with Kosovo's assembly declaring that the trial had been "staged and mendacious". These photos were taken during the late sixties when the situation was fairly good.

	Street in Prizreni	Traditional houses	Ottoman house	View of Prizreni
	Serbian Orthodox church	Across the Bistrica	Swimming in the Bistrica	Street with minaret
	To the upper town	Butcher's shop	View towards Kaljaja	Ottoman bridge

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