The National Library of Kosovo is one of the most extraordinary pieces of brutalist architecture in the Balkans. Completed in 1982 and designed by Croatian architect Andrija Mutnjaković, the building consists of a massive concrete cube draped in 99 aluminium-clad domes and wrapped in metal lattice. The result is something that manages to be simultaneously oppressive and exhilarating — a building you cannot look away from.
Whether you find it magnificent or hideous will probably depend on your relationship with communist-era architecture. What is not in dispute is its originality. Mutnjaković drew on both Byzantine church domes and Ottoman hammam architecture, fusing them with Yugoslav brutalism into something that looks like nothing else in the world. It was a finalist for the Carbuncle Cup (Britain's award for the worst new building) and has also been celebrated as one of the great buildings of the twentieth century.
Inside, the library functions well as a working research institution with a collection of around two million items. The reading rooms beneath the domes have an otherworldly quality. Visitors are welcome to enter and look around. The building sits at the edge of the University of Pristina campus, about ten minutes' walk from Mother Teresa Boulevard.