The National Library of Kosovo, domes and cubes in Pristina

If there’s one building in Pristina worth a detour, it’s this one. The National Library of Kosovo is a cluster of cubes topped by 79 domes that resembles nothing around it. You may love it or loathe it, but you’ll stop and stare, and that says a lot about any building.

Who built it and why it looks like this

It was designed by Croatian architect Andrija Mutnjaković. The Ministry of Culture sets out the background. In 1971 a masterplan was drawn up for Pristina’s University Centre, with Bashkim Fehmiu as lead designer, and the library turned out to be the only building ever built to that plan. The Assembly passed a law in 1974 to build it, work started that August and it was finished in September 1981. Its 79 domes naturally made it into my Kosovo facts.

The Municipality’s tourist map calls it a combination of cubes and domes in the “new regionalism” style and says the 79 domes symbolise knowledge. There are four floors and 16,500 square metres, 13,500 of them usable. Inside are reading rooms, a periodicals room, a photo lab, a bindery, book stores and two lecture theatres.

A library older than its building

The institution came first. According to the Ministry, Kosovo’s first central library was set up in Prizren in December 1944 and moved to Pristina in 1947. It went through several names and premises before becoming the People’s and University Library, which the Municipality places in this building from 1982. Today it bears the name of Pjetër Bogdani, one of the first Albanian writers according to the Municipality, who was once buried in the Imperial Mosque.

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What to see inside the National Library

What the Ministry of Culture values most is that the interior is almost exactly as it was made. Its record describes a design worked out to the last detail, with the original colours, materials and furniture, chairs, tables and cabinets included, and says that inside, nearly everything still breathes the years of its construction. It also highlights the rare book collections.

It’s a working public library rather than a museum. The official sources I checked don’t publish visiting hours, so I’d go on a weekday, keep my voice down and ask at the desk how far visitors can go. Outside, there are no restrictions at all.

How I’d see it

Go round it first. The façades change a great deal with the angle, and the blocks and domes read differently in each hour’s light. Then look at it from above by climbing the tower of the Mother Teresa Cathedral, about 250 metres away according to OpenStreetMap. From up there the rhythm of the domes suddenly makes sense.

It’s south of the centre in the university district, and you can walk there from Mother Teresa Boulevard via the Newborn monument. In my plan for one day in Pristina it’s the penultimate stop of the afternoon, just before the bell tower.

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

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