Drenas, stone tower houses and caves west of Pristina

Drenas is one of those municipalities that never makes the guidebooks and, once you read the official records properly, turns out to hold more than you’d expect. There’s no grand monument or historic old town, but there are 18th-century tower houses, two late antique walled enclosures and a handful of protected caves, all about 22 km from Pristina.

One municipality, three names

In the statistics agency’s tables it still appears as Gllogoc; OpenStreetMap and the regional water company use Drenas, and the Serbian name is Glogovac. It sits in the Pristina region, about 22 km west of the capital in a straight line. In 2024 it had 48,079 inhabitants, ten thousand fewer than in 2011, spread across 35 settlements, while the town itself rose to 7,081. Komoran, Tërstenik and Llapushnik come next. The OSCE, in its 2018 profile, reckons on about 290 km² and describes an economy of farming and small businesses.

The tower houses of Gradicë

What interests me most in Drenas is in the village of Gradicë. There the Ministry of Culture protects the Dervisholli family compound, from the 18th and 19th centuries, which its record calls one of the few surviving examples of this kind of residential complex. The Ministry adds that it was where the village men gathered to deliberate.

The compound has a men’s kulla, 9 by 7.77 metres and two storeys high, with the stable and kitchen downstairs and, upstairs, the meeting room, a corner for ablutions and another for washing. The women’s kulla is stone up to the first floor and fired brick above. The family house, two granaries and two corn cribs complete the group, and every building has wooden ceilings, hearths and chimneys. If Kosovo’s kullas intrigue you, this is a good place to understand how they worked inside.

The Ministry also protects the late 19th-century Ibish Morina kulla at Qikatovë and a 19th-century house at Pokleku i vjetër, but both records say they’re in poor condition. I wouldn’t travel for them.

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Pristina on Expedia and filter by area before price.

Two forts for hill walkers

Some 12 km south-west of town, at Vuçak, at the foot of Mount Kasmaç, the walls of two enclosures survive, Gjyteti i Madh and Gjyteti i Vogël, in a commanding position. Finds range from prehistory to the Middle Ages, but the Ministry regards it as a typical late antique fort built to protect the local population.

Llapushnik, about 10 km south-west, on the slopes of the Drenica mountains, had a circuit wall of roughly 200 by 300 metres, more than two metres thick, with towers. The so-called fortress tower measures 10 by 10 metres, and late Roman bricks and roof tiles turn up all over the site.

Caves, springs and old trees

The Environmental Protection Agency has one of its longest lists of natural monuments here. The caves of Baica and Gllanasella have been protected since 1987, and the two-hectare Kishnareka cave since 2006. At Llapushnik it protects a rock formation, Guri i Gradinës, and at Poklek a mineral spring, along with several notable oaks, among them the six at Likoshan. The list doesn’t say whether the caves can be visited, so I’m mentioning them as a fact rather than a plan; for a cave that’s set up for visitors, Gadime Cave in Lipjan is the safe bet.

If you are short on time, see the best tours in Pristina and pick one that fits your day.

How I’d do it

From Pristina, by car and in the morning, with Gradicë as the goal and Llapushnik if there’s time. OpenStreetMap shows a railway station in Drenas, but without reliable published timetables I wouldn’t plan the day around a train.

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Pristina on Booking.com and filter by area before price.