Pristina, also spelled Prishtina and Priština (Albanian: Prishtinë or Prishtina, Turkish: Priştine), is the capital and largest city of Kosovo. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous municipality and district.Preliminary results of the 2011 census put the population of Pristina at 198,000. The city has a majority Albanian population, alongside other smaller communities including Bosniaks, Roma and others. It is the administrative, educational, and cultural centre of Kosovo. The city is home to the University of Pristina and is served by the Pristina International Airport. Early history Pristina, end of the 19th centuryIn Roman times, a large town called Ulpiana existed 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) to the south of modern-day Pristina. This city was destroyed but was restored by the Emperor Justinian I. Today the town of Lipljan stands on the site of the Roman city, and remains of the old city can still be seen. After the fall of Rome, Pristina grew from the ruins of the former Roman city. The city was located at a junction of roads leading in all directions throughout the Balkans and it soon rose to become an important trading centre on the main trade routes across south-eastern Europe. Pristina came to great importance in the medieval Serbian state, and served as the capital of King Milutin (1282--1321) and other Serbian rulers from the Nemanjić and Branković dynasties until the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, when an invading Ottoman army decisively defeated the Balkans coalition army. In the following decades the area gradually came under Ottoman control, with an Ottoman law-court established in 1423. The whole of Serbia was subsequently conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1459. Kosovar Government Central Building (Formerly a bank, damaged in the 1999 war, now fully renovated)Pjetër Bogdani, an original writer of early Albanian literature, spent the last three years of his life in Kosovo and from March 1686 he promoted resistance to the armies of the Ottoman Empire. At the same time the Great Serb exodus started; tens of thousands of Kosovo Serb families withdrew from Kosovo to the Habsburg Empire, led by their patriarch Arsenije III Carnojevic and the Habsburg army. The demographic balance slowly shifted in favour of Albanians. During the Ottoman Empire, Pristina became increasingly Ottoman in character following the conversion to Islam of many of its inhabitants, both Albanians and Slavs. From the 1870s onwards Albanians in the region formed the League of Prizren to resist Ottoman rule, and a provisional government was formed in 1881. On the other hand Serbia tried to enlist the support of Albanians against the Ottomans but this came to nothing, as Albanian Mujahidin were encouraging a policy akin to ethnic cleansing. This increased the number of Kosovo Serbs emigrating from Kosovo, while for their part, Albanians from Albania migrated from the infertile lands of northern Albania to take advantage of the fertile lands of Kosovo.Wikipedia

• published: 15 Nov 2012
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