Gračanica Monastery
Five-domed Serbian Orthodox church of about 1321, covered inside with medieval frescoes.
Gračanica Monastery lies on the edge of the village of the same name, about ten kilometres south-east of Pristina. The church of the Dormition of the Mother of God was raised by the Serbian king Stefan Milutin and completed around 1321, on the foundations of an earlier basilica. Its plan is a compact inscribed cross carrying five domes, the central one lifted on a tall drum above four lower ones, with walls of alternating courses of stone and brick that step upwards in a pyramidal massing.
The interior is covered almost entirely with wall paintings of the 1320s, among the most complete surviving fresco cycles of the late Byzantine world. They include a Last Judgement, a Nemanjić family tree and portraits of Milutin and Queen Simonida. An outer narthex was added later in the fourteenth century. The monastery is an active convent and a seat of the Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Raška and Prizren. In 2006 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list as part of the Medieval Monuments in Kosovo.
Highlights
- Five domes rising in a stepped pyramid of stone and brick
- Fresco cycle of the 1320s covering the whole interior
- Portraits of King Milutin and Queen Simonida
- Part of the UNESCO Medieval Monuments in Kosovo
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