Travel Guide Podujeva

The city has three names: Podujevë/Podujeva (pronounced "podou-yéva") or Besianë/Besiana in Albanian and Подујево/Podujevo in Serbian. It has about 25,000 inhabitants (99% of them Albanians) and is the capital of the municipality of the same no (90,000 inhabitants). It is located 31 km north of Pristina (on the M25) Surrounded by medium-sized mountains, Podujeva/Podujevo has no old monuments, but a small and pleasant town center along the Lab River, the main tributary of the Sitnica. It is mainly its surroundings that Kosovars frequent. The town is located near the lake of Batlava, which is very popular with the Pristinians on sunny days, and right next to the border post of Merdare, the main crossing point between Kosovo and Serbia. A former Serbian village developed by the Ottomans, Podujeva/Podujevo remained multicultural for a long time with 30% Serbs and Montenegrins in 1961. But the city became a hotbed of Albanian nationalism and the last Serbian inhabitants were driven out during the Kosovo war. Heavy fighting took place here in 1999 and fourteen Albanian women and children were killed by the ill-fated Serbian paramilitary group Scorpions. In retaliation, twelve tourists from Serbia were killed here in an attack by Albanian nationalists in 2001. Since 2008, Podujeva/Podujevo has been called Besiana in reference to an obscure Dardanian town mentioned in a 6th century Byzantine document. But this name is very little used.