Decan · XK

Monastery Visoki Decani

Visoki Dečani is the largest medieval church in the Balkans and one of Europe's most extraordinary artistic achievements. Founded in 1327 by the Serbian king Stefan Dečanski as his royal mausoleum, the monastery stands in a lush valley at the foot of the Prokletije Mountains near the town of Deçan in western Kosovo. Its church unites Romanesque marble façades with a Byzantine interior painted floor-to-ceiling with more than a thousand frescoed figures—a combination so distinctive that UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List in 2004 as an "irreplaceable treasure, a place where traditions of Romanesque architecture meet artistic patterns of the Byzantine world." Visiting today is an exercise in contrasts. The monastery is home to around twenty-five monks who sheltered refugees of every ethnicity during the Kosovo War and whose gates are still guarded around the clock by international peacekeeping troops. You must leave an ID card at the entrance checkpoint, but once you pass through the impressive gate and see the marble church glowing against the mountain backdrop, the military hardware melts into memory. Inside, the frescoes burn with fourteenth-century gold and colour in a silence broken only by the occasional chant drifting from the north chapel.