Podujevo

in Podujevo

Podujevo - a city located in the north-eastern part of Kosovo and Metohija, is the center of the municipality of the same name and belongs to the Kosovo Administrative District. Very early mentions of this settlement can be found in the Turkish notebook of the census of the area carried out by the Branković family in 1455. In that document, Podujevo is mentioned as a Serbian village with 43 houses, in which Pope Stepan and his brother Petar are mentioned at the top of the list. Later, the census of Vučtrinski sandžak from 1487 also mentions the town under this name. There are also data stored in the Dubrovnik archive which show that around 1660 merchants from Dubrovnik traded wool in Podujevo. After that, Podujevo appears under that name as a town that Stanoje Glavaš penetrated during the First Serbian Uprising in 1806, where he allegedly built a trench towards the Turks. In the period of the First Balkan War, you can find newspaper articles that talk about the liberation of Podujevo by the Serbian Army with the exact date of October 21, 1912. Allegedly, a Serbian medieval village church once existed in this village, but no information about its exact location has been preserved. However, there are estimates that it was most likely located on today's Merćezu hill, which in those days served as a fortress and a border tower for the Turks. Allegedly, after the end of World War I, the church of St. was built on this hill. Ilija, but it was destroyed already in World War II by the Germans and Albanian fascists. The church was eventually rebuilt and restored in 1971, and another church dedicated to St. Andrei.