Štrpce, the municipality holding the Sharr's northern face

Nearly everyone who looks up Štrpce is really looking for Brezovica. Fair enough, but the municipality is more than its ski centre. It’s the valley that opens at the foot of the Sharr’s northern face, red-roofed villages among meadows, and it holds a large share of southern Kosovo’s protected mountains.

A small municipality that has grown

The Kosovo Agency of Statistics (ASK) found 10,771 people in Štrpce (in Albanian, Shtërpcë) in 2024, up from 6,949 in 2011. Along with Ferizaj, it’s the only municipality in the region with more people than back then. Its 16 settlements shift a lot from census to census, with cases like Sevcë, up from 176 to 1,192 residents, or Brezovica itself, from 68 to 942. ASK doesn’t explain the differences, and I won’t read anything into them either.

The main village, with 2,431 people, is the largest settlement, followed by Brod (1,375), not to be confused with the Brod in Dragash on the far side of the range.

The protected mountains

This is the deeper reason to come. The Sharr National Park directorate counts 15,210 ha of the park, 39% of it, within Štrpce. The park’s natural values paper places its largest glacial lake here, Livadhishte, a 230-metre lake lying at 2,173 m with a depth of 7 m, ringed by high pasture full of endemic plants.

The same paper proposes turning several areas of the municipality into strict reserves. Prrocka e Durlës, for its mountain maple, beech and Macedonian pine. Gryka or Klisura, near the settlement of Pulan, for a yew and beech wood the park calls rare and endangered. And Bistra, shared with Prizren, around the park’s highest summit and Jazhinca lake. They’re proposals rather than declared reserves, but they show clearly where the treasures lie.

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Five churches with Special Zones

The Ministry of Culture heritage database lists nothing in Štrpce, but the 2008 law on Special Protective Zones (03/L-039) protects five of its churches with a 50 m perimeter. They are St Nicholas in the main village, St Theodore at Biti e Poshtme, St Nicholas and the Virgin at Gotovushë, and St George at Biti e Epërme. I have no official source on opening times or condition, so I’ll leave it there. If you approach, be discreet and dress modestly, as at any place of worship. For protected churches across Kosovo, see Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo.

Getting there and when

You can drive in from two directions. On OpenStreetMap, the Prizren road follows the Lumbardhi up to Prevalla and then descends into this valley. From Ferizaj you come in from the north. I couldn’t find official bus timetables, so I’d drive, on the right.

For winter, the FCDO’s verdict on the roads is fair at best and poor off the main routes or in bad weather, and it says to keep off them at night. In summer the warning is about wildfires, April to October. Bring insurance that covers mountain activities, because the GHIC has no value in Kosovo. For the high ground more widely, see mountains in Kosovo.

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