Travel Guide Kamenicë (Kosovska Kamenica)

The town is known by three names: Kamenicë/Kamenica (pronounced "kamenitsa") or Dardana/Dardanë in Albanian and Косовска Каменица/Kosovska Kamenica in Serbian. It has a population of 7,300 (94% Albanians, 5% Serbs) and 63,000 with the rest of the municipality (17% Serbs). It is located 19 km northeast of Кончуљ/Končulj (Serbia), 23 km southeast of Novo Brdo/Novobërda, 52 km northeast of Gjilan/Gnjilane.The easternmost town in Kosovo, Kamenica is almost landlocked in Serbia. Officially called Dardana since 2001, it remains mostly known as Kamenica. If it has several restaurants, it has few places to visit except the medieval ruins of the fortress of Kulina and the Serbian monasteries of Ubožac and Tamnica. But today it is one of the few places in the country where Serbs and Albanians really live together. It is true that 90% of the Serbian inhabitants have fled the city since 1998. But no real violence was recorded during or since the Kosovo war. Since 2018, the young mayor Qëndron Kastrati (born in 1988) has taken small, encouraging decisions, such as creating a multi-ethnic municipal school or a translation system so that Serbian elected officials, who are in the minority, can follow meetings with their Albanian colleagues. It may not seem like much, but each of these initiatives (unprecedented in the country) makes headlines in the local press.