An article in BBC Travel, by Deborah Huso, has made a summary of Pristina's monuments, has raised several questions, including whether "Prishtina is the ugliest capital in Europe".
However, the writer of the text says that during her stay in our city, she has seen objects that were described as ugly before, such as the building of the National Library of Kosovo, and which she says have a beauty that she has not seen anywhere else. Koha.net reports.
In the end, she says that the beauty of the city of Pristina is the youth ready to write the next chapter.
Below you will find the complete article of "BBC Travel".
Is the capital of Kosovo the ugliest in Europe?
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Prishtina, Kosovo, is often singled out as one of the ugliest capitals in Europe. It is definitely a place I never thought I would visit. The only point of reference for me about this country was in a dark, distant corner of my mind, recalling the tragic events that covered the war in Kosovo in the late 1990s after years of ethnic cleansing and the deportation of some 750,000 Albanians. ethnic. For years, the Albanian majority of Kosovo have 'struggled' to control the region against the Serbs, who, although they only make up 10 percent of the population, consider Kosovo to be the cradle of their cultural identity.
The Kosovars declared their independence from Serbia in February 2008. Ten years later, I suddenly found myself in this messy city of flesh. You look to one side and see minarets of centuries-old mosques towering to the sky and new statues of local and foreign heroes. Look to the other side, and the once famous Grandi Hotel that was owned by the state, today stands empty with broken windows. "I don't think it's the ugliest hotel in the world", the president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, told a reporter from "The New York Times". "But that's only because the world is too big."
But there I was on a warm summer evening, picking my way along a few blocks south of St. Mother Teresa Cathedral near Bill Clinton and George Bush boulevards. I came to Prishtina just to pass through on my way back from a 10-day hike in the Albanian Alps. After renting an apartment with no running water (a neighborhood problem that the landlord couldn't explain), I decided to get out and see as much as I could in my short two-day stay.
With its concrete, communist-style buildings and dusty streets, I immediately understood why Prishtina faces such nasty accusations. Lonely Planet magazine called it the "most aesthetically pleasing place you'll ever visit," while The Boston Globe once said, "This Balkan city is probably the ugliest and funnest in Europe." But, considering the recent bloody and turbulent past, comparing Pristina with places like Paris or Rome is not fair. After all, only in the last century, wars in the Balkans have caused Kosovo to be ruled by the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Serbia, Yugoslavia, and even Italy (as part of Greater Albania during World War II) and from Serbia again.
Today, although it houses some of the oldest mosques in Europe, much of the once proud Ottoman architecture has been replaced by communist structures from the days of Yugoslavia. Indeed, my only purpose while in the city was to see the most famous constructions of the communist period: the National Library of Kosovo, a massive pile of concrete blocks that has been called one of the ugliest buildings by Virtual Tourist . Opened in 1982, the National Library is Pristina's most distinctive architectural work: a Brutalist monster, its fence-like metal exterior reminiscent of a prison.
However, as I pushed open the glass doors tucked under the metal railing of the library, I saw that there was a distinctive beauty to the building, with its 99 domes and large windows. Both its unusual exterior and the mosaic-like marble floor of the lobby, which is flooded with natural light from the building's largest dome, show a link between Pristina's lost Byzantine and Islamic architecture.
But then, a few blocks away, is the new spiral building of the Saint Mother Teresa Cathedral, completed in 2017, 14 years after Pope John Paul II beatified the Albanian-born Mother Teresa. The 76-meter structure is an ironic building here – both because Vatican City does not recognize Kosovo's sovereignty and because 90 percent of Kosovo's population is Muslim.
There is a certain poetic justice. Before the Ottoman Empire took over Kosovo in the 14th century, most Albanians were Christians. Under Turkish rule, the majority converted to Islam to escape the taxes imposed on Christians. My city guide, Bekim Xhemili, curator and ethnologist at the Ethnological Museum of Kosovo, told me that only 3% of Kosovars are Catholic.
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The history of the construction of Saint Mother Teresa Cathedral reflects the desire of Kosovars to leave behind decades of conflicts (most of them more ethnic than religious). According to Xhemili, Muslims as well as Christians have donated funds for the construction of the cathedral, while most of these funds came from the Albanian diaspora in the USA.
You wouldn't know how crazy things are until you walk through the streets of Pristina, and in particular the main boulevard, Mother Teresa. Lined with cafes and a memorial commemorating the liberation of Yugoslavia during World War II to bronze figures painted with American and British flags, the street fills up several times a day. Parents walk their children, tourists lick ice cream and students queue from one cafe to another.
In fact, one of the most beautiful things I found in Pristina was the coffee culture. In a walk of one or two blocks, you will find 5-6 cafes, and according to the Association of Gastronomists of Pristina, there are more than 100 of them in the city which has no more than 200,000 inhabitants. Like Pristina itself, its cafes reflect a mix of Balkan, European and Middle Eastern influences, with some macchiatos that would rival Italy or any specialty brand in Turkey.
Leaving the coffee aside, what makes this place more unique is what people say about this small landlocked country. Cafes are natural enterprises in an area with few economic prospects, and most people drink coffee. Cafes are usually where government workers, non-workers and young intellectuals hang out. After all, it is the cafe where the initial planning of the Kosovo independence movement began.
In a 5-minute walk from Mother Teresa Boulevard, I came around the Newborn monument, which marks the 11th anniversary of Kosovo's independence from Serbia. Every year on the independence day of February 17, Kosovars redecorate the monument with a new look. Sometimes, its giant letters contain colorful graffiti, while other times, they are covered with citizens' signatures.
Across the street from the Newborn monument, there is also the tragic monument, Heroinat, which was erected in 2015 in honor of the 20 women who were raped during the last war in Kosovo during the years 1998-99. Each needle placed in the monument represents a woman. Those needles are set at different lengths and form a woman's face. The monument was very touching, especially for me. In the days before I arrived in Pristina, I stayed in the homes of several ethnic Albanians in Kosovo where I often sat down for Turkish coffee with the ladies of the house who often started telling me silent references about what had happened to their friends, sisters and daughters at the hands of Serbian soldiers – bringing to life one of the most tragic and brutal tactics carried out by both Serbian forces and, according to Human Rights Watch, the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serb, Albanian and Roma women.
The road that leads you away from a memorial site of one of Kosovo's darkest times is named after the former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. Indeed, even in 2019, many Kosovars have a love affair with the Clinton family, with the Bush family and with other American politicians, who feel that they were instrumental in the declaration of Kosovo's independence.
Kosovars remember the 1999 US-led NATO bombing that finally freed them from Serbian control and stopped the atrocities of the war on both sides. "We love America, we love Bill Clinton. Americans are our heroes", added Xhemili.
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Like Prishtina itself, sometimes even that love is not beautiful. "Perhaps we have the ugliest statue of Bill Clinton in the world", said the mayor of the Municipality of Pristina, Shpend Ahmeti in an interview with "Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa" last year. "His wife, Hillary, inaugurated him, with a face that wanted to say 'this does not look like my husband,'" Ahmeti said.
And without a doubt, Prishtina is not like Paris or Rome. In Pristina you can find a resilient people and a youth ready to write the next chapter. And it is undeniably beautiful.
