Prizren is Kosovo's most beautiful and historically layered city, sitting in a mountain valley in the southwest where the Lumbardhi River cuts through the Šar Mountains. It has been a market town and cultural centre for over a thousand years, and the old city's mix of Ottoman mosques, Byzantine churches, and stone-paved streets is unlike anywhere else in the Western Balkans.
The old centre is compact and walkable. The Bajrakli Gazi Mehmet Pasha Mosque, built in 1561, is the oldest Islamic monument in Prizren and was the cornerstone of the city's Ottoman transformation. The Turkish bath next to it — solid cut stone with large bricks, built by the same Mehmet Pasha — is one of the best-preserved hammams in the region. Sinan Pasha's Mosque has an enormous dome and walls painted in geometric designs and strong colours. Up on the hill above the city, the Kaljaja fortress has medieval origins and commands views over the valley.
The city's pre-Ottoman Christian heritage is equally present. Shen Maria Levishka — the Church of Our Lady of Ljeviš — is a medieval Serbian Orthodox church built over what may have been an early Christian basilica. It was converted to a mosque under the Ottomans and back to a church during the Yugoslav period. The League of Prizren building, where the 1878 Albanian national movement held its founding assembly, is now a museum; it was burned during the 2004 Kosovo riots and has since been reconstructed.
Prizren is in the municipality of Prizren, which stretches 640 square kilometres across the Šar Mountains to the Albanian and North Macedonian borders. The mountain cheese produced in the area — Sharr mountain cheese — is known across the region.