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Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The Palace of Youth and Sports is a remarkable structure – a symbol for the city of Prishtina – where many activities are held throughout the year. The complex is a popular meeting spot, a stage, a place for cultivating talents and a site that shapes the city’s identity.
The decision to build the Palace of Youth and Sports was made by a public referendum. A portion of the budget was provided by Prishtina residents, a percentage of whose wages funded the construction effort. Construction on the sprawling complex was started in 1977 with the completed premises opening to the public four years later, under the name “Boro-Ramiz” Youth and Sports Centre. Živorad Janković was responsible for the building’s singular design.
The Palace of Youth and Sports is still used as sporting grounds, where many teams practice and generations of Kosovar athletes have trained. The palace’s Red Hall and Atelier Hall are spaces where the cultural community gathers to celebrate classical music and other forms of creative expression. Damaged in a fire in February 2000, the former ice rink is now a parking lot for the municipal offices within the complex.
Palace of Youth and Sports, formerly named Boro and Ramiz, is a multi-purpose hall located in Pristina, Kosovo. It includes two indoor arenas, the larger of which had a capacity of 8,000 spectators but is currently out of use, and the smaller in-use with a capacity of 2,800 spectators. It also includes a shopping mall, indoor parking, two convention halls and a library. The building in its entirety measures over 10,000 m2 (110,000 sq ft).
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Theatre venue with a variety of cultural and artistic events, including theatre performances, concerts, exhibitions and an International Jazz Festival in November.
Muzeu i Burgut të Prishtinës - Burgu i Idealit
It used to be a place of horror. From 1945 until the end of the war in Kosovo, hundreds of Kosovo Albanians would experience torture and deprivation from freedom for their dissident thought, activism for rights and liberty. Located in the center of Prishtina, an almost inconspicuous door leads into a once infamous political interrogation center and prison. The cold, damp, coiled corridors; the claustrophobic cells with barred, tiny, grimy windows; the obvious lack of facilities that every human being deserves (although renovations made when the building became a museum improved on what used to really be here); the chest-tightening three-story labyrinth - all these hold within them countless stories of systemic abuse against one group.
There is an endlessly looping scroll of the names of people who walked through those doors and never came out the same. Stories of escape attempts using a small metallic file smuggled through a mayonnaise tube; a man giving up his chance to escape to allow his friend to flee into freedom from window to rooftop through barbed wire; a fig tree in the once-walking area with a quote about freedom.
The former Prishtina prison has been transformed into a museum. It memorializes the history of persecution and oppression and represents all prisons that tried to break the political prisoners. The building is located next to the main police station in Prishtina.
Kosovo Independence House “Dr. Ibrahim Rugova”
Historical building that once served as a head of Kosovo Writers Association in late 1980s and then as a former headquarters of the Democratic League of Kosovo at the beginning of 1990s. In 1999, the building was burnt by Serbian forces during the Kosovo war, while after the war it was rebuilt and opened as the museum. The Museum “Independence House Dr. Ibrahim Rugova” was opened at the end of 2007. The space of the Museum is quite small and it reflects the efforts of the Kosovo Albanian people on the road to independence. Various exhibits are represented there, some of them belong to the late former president, Dr. Ibrahim Rugova.
The Cathedral of Saint Mother Teresa in Pristina is a Roman Catholic cathedral is one of Pristina's tallest buildings inaugurated in 2010. The cathedral is dedicated to the Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary, Saint Teresa of Calcutta. There are audio guides available too.
Albanian: Bibloteka Kombetare e Kosoves
It is the highest institution of its kind in Kosovo. With a fund of thousands of books it is one of the biggest libraries in the region. Every year more than 40,000 exemplars are added to the library archive. The building was designed by the Croatian architect Andrija Mutnjakovic. Its space consists of 16,500 m². It is made with zenith windows, with 99 domes of different sizes and is entirely covered in a metal fishing net, which have their own particular architectural symbolism. It houses two reading rooms with 300 and 100 seats respectively, a reading room for periodicals, rooms for special collections, cataloguing and research, a 150-seat amphitheatre and a 75-seat meeting hall. The lobby of the library is used for various cultural events. The floor of the hall is a unique work of diverse mosaic marble stone. The largest dome of the library is the main ornament of the hall's high ceiling, thus providing ample natural lighting. According to the architect of the National Library of Kosovo the building is meant to represent a style blending Byzantine and Islamic architectural forms.
Construction has not been completed after having started in the early 1990s. It has been disputed by ethnic Albanian population after having been constructed in University grounds during Milosevic regime.