Kosovo's old bazaar town — the longest çarshi (covered market) in the Balkans, the finest burek in Kosovo, and the Hadum Mosque
Gjakova (Đakovica in Serbian) is Kosovo's most beautifully preserved Ottoman bazaar town — 80km southwest of Pristina, near the Albanian border, with a çarshi (old bazaar) that stretches over 500m and is considered the longest traditional covered market street in the Balkans. The town was one of the most complete examples of Ottoman urban planning in the former Yugoslavia and was largely destroyed by Serbian forces in 1999 (450 shops burned in the old bazaar, hundreds of houses demolished); the reconstruction — using traditional methods and original materials where possible — has been remarka…
Gjakova was established as an Ottoman town in the 15th century and grew through the 16th–18th centuries as a significant regional market. The town's Albanian population resisted both Serbian and Ottoman control at various points; the 1878 League of Prizren (the founding political declaration of Albanian national consciousness) had significant participation from Gjakova. In the 1998–1999 Kosovo War, Gjakova was the site of some of the most systematic destruction of civilian property by Serbian forces — the burning of the bazaar and the massacre at Meja (April 1999, when over 300 Albanian men w…