Snags Hit Restoration of Kosovo’s Oldest Mosque

The restoration of Pristina's Bazaar Mosque, which stands at the entrance to the old town, is delayed and set to run massively over budget.

While city hall in Pristina says it has set aside 150,000 euro for the work, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, IPCM, says 600,000 euro are needed.

Last September, the IPCM started determining the bill needed to bring the Carshi [market] mosque back to its 15th-century glory.

Mustafe Halili, head of the cultural department at the Municipality of Pristina, told the daily Koha Ditore that the work carried out to date had been disappointing.

"It is obvious that the whole facade has not been removed, as was intended," said Halili.

The head of the IPCM, Agim Gerguri, said he needed at least one more month to report to the municipality, Kosovo's Ministry of Culture and the Islamic Community on the results of their inspection of the walls of the mosque, which is considered the oldest in Kosovo.

"We are approaching the final preparations of the report. At most, we will be ready in a month to present the project," Gerguri said.

"We did it in a very professional way as the report is in 3D, while we have also engaged teams from Skopje [in Macedonia] to carry out the land measurements," Gerguri added.

He maintained that around 600,000 euro was needed for the renovation.

But Halili, from the municipality, said it would not be easy to find 600,000 euro. "That much money is too much even to build a new mosque from scratch," he said. 

“However, we will look at the project that comes to us," he added, "and if with the means we have allocated are not enough to complete the works, we'll probably allocate other funds later.

"But it’s not in our interest for this project to take years," Halili warned.