Prizren

Prizren is Kosovo's Ottoman heart: a small city of stone bridges over a cold mountain river, minarets and bell towers in the same skyline, a square called Shadervan around a fountain where the whole town takes its coffee, and, on the hill above it all, the Kalaja, a fortress that has watched over the roofs since the Byzantines and now watches the sunset with everyone who has climbed up for it. The Sinan Pasha mosque of 1615 is the one in the photographs; the House of the League of Prizren is where, in 1878, Albanian nationhood was first argued into being; and the Church of the Virgin of Ljeviš, from 1307, keeps its frescoes under UNESCO's care. Behind the town rise the Šar mountains, with the ski slopes of Prevalla thirty kilometres up the road.

The traveller crosses the Stone Bridge and sits at Shadervan first, because that is what the town does; sees the mosque and the hammam and the League's house; climbs to the Kalaja an hour before sunset by the path from the Church of the Saviour, and stays until the muezzins and the bells have both had their say; walks Marash under the plane trees along the river; buys silver filigree, the town's old craft, from a workshop rather than a stall; and, in early August, watches a documentary on a screen hung over the river at Dokufest, the festival that put the city on a different kind of map.

The Guide's honesty: Prizren is safe, cheap, welcoming and easily walked in a day, though a night is kinder — the evening on the river is the point —; Kosovo uses the euro and, for most passports, needs no visa, but check the entry rules if you are also crossing into Serbia, which does not recognise Kosovan stamps; the fortress path is steep and unlit — climb up in daylight and come down with a torch; the coffee is Turkish and long, and the raki comes without being asked; and the town has known hard years and does not need them recited to it — take the sunset, take the coffee, and let Prizren speak first.