The Gjilan region, Kosovo's overlooked east

Eastern Kosovo barely features on most itineraries. People land in Pristina and head for Prizren or Peja, and Gjilan gets left to one side. If small-scale heritage is your thing, I think that’s a mistake, because within a short drive you’ll find things that elsewhere in Kosovo you’d have to chase down one at a time.

Six municipalities along the Binačka Morava

Kosovo’s seven regions are the units its statistics agency (ASK) counts tourists by, but the agency never says which municipalities belong where, so I take the split from OpenStreetMap. This one gets six, Gjilan, Kamenica, Kllokot, Partesh, Ranillug and Viti. Together they had 150,176 people in 2024, and Gjilan municipality alone had 82,980, the fourth largest in Kosovo.

The trends vary a lot. Kamenica fell from 36,085 in 2011 to 22,868 in 2024, and Viti from 46,987 to 35,566, while Partesh nearly doubled, from 1,787 to 3,240. ASK doesn’t explain the swings, so I won’t guess at them.

On mother tongue, the 2024 census shows Albanian majorities in Gjilan, Kamenica and Viti and Serbian majorities in Partesh and Ranillug. Kllokot sits in between, with Albanian slightly ahead of Serbian. I mention it purely as practical information, since both are official languages and you’ll hear both around here.

The listed sights

Kosovo’s official heritage inventory, the Ministry of Culture’s DTK, holds 24 entries in Gjilan municipality, nine in Viti, eight in Kamenica, one in Partesh and none in Kllokot or Ranillug. The most visitable are in town. The Atik Mosque in Gjilan, which the DTK dates to the early 17th century and calls the town’s first mosque, faces Mustafa Pasha’s former residence of 1887, which the municipality reopened as an ethnological museum on 18 May 2021.

Out of town the periods stack up. The DTK records a cemetery of nine Iron Age burial mounds at Llashticë, about 10 km north-east, where the best-preserved mound still measures 32 m across and 1.6 m high and dates from the 8th to 7th centuries BC, and the fort at Pogragjë, about 10 km south-east, with a 1.2-hectare enclosure, an 8 by 8 m watchtower and the layout typical of Justinian’s fortifications. The oldest coin found there, from the years 246 to 249, carries the portrait of Otacilia Severa, wife of the emperor Philip I. At Topanicë, near Kamenica, Sheikh Zenel’s tekke dates from 1754, with seven graves in its tomb. I set them alongside the rest of Kosovo’s in castles in Kosovo and in the mosque and museum guides.

Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Gjilan before prices climb.

Monasteries and churches

Two monasteries in the region fall under Law 03/L-039, the one that created Kosovo’s Special Protective Zones. Draganac Monastery, about 9 km north of Gjilan on OpenStreetMap, is one of the zones drawn on an attached map. Binač, at Buzovik in Viti municipality, gets a 100 m zone, though the DTK now describes it as ruined.

The register also includes medieval churches, such as the ruined St Demetrius at Kmetoc, from the 14th century, and, around Kamenica, those at Vaganesh, Hajnoc and Moçar, from the 13th and 14th centuries. There’s Catholic heritage too, including St Anthony’s at Binçë, opened in 1972, and St Anne’s at Dunav, built in 1938 and, according to its record, the only Catholic church in Gjilan municipality. It stands 800 m up, close to the point where Kosovo, Serbia and North Macedonia meet, in a churchyard ringed by poplars, pines and limes.

Getting around and where to stay

I couldn’t find official bus timetables between the villages, so a car is the sensible way to cover the region, driving on the right. On OpenStreetMap, Gjilan sits some 33 km from Pristina in a direct line, and from Gjilan most places are within 20 km. Out here that means minor roads, and the FCDO warns that conditions get worse in rural areas and recommends keeping off the road after dark. If you’re hiring, remember your UK licence is fine but your GHIC isn’t, so travel insurance comes first.

ASK counted 34,666 overnight guests and 155,562 overnight stays in the region in 2025. That’s about 4.5 nights each, the longest average stay of the seven regions, though only 9,537 guests came from abroad. Capacity stood at 39 establishments, 1,465 rooms and 3,760 beds. I’d stay in Gjilan and head out in a different direction each day.

If you would rather have a local show you round, book a guided tour in Gjilan and choose by the reviews.

Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Gjilan before prices climb.