Kamenica, the municipality of 58 villages

Let me be straight with you about Kamenica. No one building here is worth the drive by itself. What it has is a scatter of small things across hills and villages, and one of them, the tekke at Topanicë, is among the most curious sights in eastern Kosovo.

Hills and villages

Kamenica (Kamenicë in Albanian) lies north-east of Gjilan, in the region OpenStreetMap assigns to that town. The 2024 census found 22,868 people, more than a third fewer than the 36,085 of 2011, spread across 58 settlements, the highest number in the Gjilan region. The town had 5,206 residents, followed by Koretin, Rogaçicë, Berivojcë and Topanicë.

The photo on this page shows the setting, blocks of flats on the valley floor, red-roofed houses climbing the slopes and wooded hills all round. By mother tongue the census counts 20,558 Albanian, 1,891 Serbian and 378 Romani speakers. Further east is neighbouring Ranillug, a far smaller municipality.

The Topanicë tekke

The one place I’d make a point of seeing is Sheikh Zenel Abedini’s tekke at Topanicë. The Ministry of Culture heritage register (DTK) dates it to 1754 and explains that it hosted ceremonies of the Halveti dervish order. It’s a single-storey building of stone, mud brick and timber, with a half-open porch on five carved wooden posts, two of them with capitals. Inside are two rooms, one where the dervishes met and one for the ceremony itself, which still has its mihrab.

Beside it is the tomb, with seven graves, Zenel’s among them. The DTK says the tekke was restored in 2012 and that in November 2021 its own team couldn’t get inside because the caretaker wouldn’t allow it, so I can’t promise access. I bring tekkes and mosques together in mosques in Kosovo.

Also at Topanicë, the DTK records a site on a rocky hill called Gradec, at 480 m, with remains covering about 6 hectares. Digs in 2017 traced it from the Eneolithic through to Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Gjilan for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.

Three medieval churches

The register lists three late medieval churches in Kamenica. At Hajnoc, on the road from Kamenica to Strezoc, a 14th-century monastery stands on older foundations, with fragments of frescoes from that time; a roadside sign, its record notes, calls it Tamnica, or prison. At Moçar, to the north-east, is another 14th-century monastery on a cross plan, with three apses and herringbone brickwork, which the DTK links to the Morava school. And at Vaganesh, about 20 km north-west and over 750 m up, a 13th to 14th-century church of the Virgin survives in a village where ASK counted only 4 residents in 2024. For the rest of the Orthodox heritage, see Kosovo monasteries.

Getting there

None of these sites has published opening times, admission or visiting rules, and I couldn’t find official buses between the villages. By car from Gjilan, the town is about 16 km away in a straight line according to OpenStreetMap, driving on the right. Country roads here can be rough by the FCDO’s account, and it’s best not to drive them at night, so I’d tour the villages in daylight.

So you do not lose the morning at the ticket office, browse tickets and tours in Gjilan on GetYourGuide.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Gjilan for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.