Parku arkeologjik Ulpiana

Ulpiana Archaeological Park lies near Prishtina, Kosovo, across open fields where the remains of an ancient Roman city emerge from the grass. You can follow streets, drainage channels, public baths, a pagan temple, and the fortified basilica through the northern gate, once the city’s main entrance. Beyond the walls, the northern necropolis marks the cemetery used during the Roman period and late antiquity.

Trajan founded Ulpiana in the second century, near hills rich in silver, lead, and gold. The city covered more than 120 hectares, with over 70 defensive towers and an estimated population of 5,000 to 10,000 people. Markets, workshops, villas, aqueducts, and baths gathered along the Cardo Maximus, while a large residential complex may have housed the archbishop. In the late fourth or early fifth century, a nearly 40-metre basilica and a nearby baptistery reflected the city’s Christian transformation. Goth attacks in 472 and an earthquake in 518 damaged the settlement, but Justinian I rebuilt it as Justiniana Secunda before abandonment during the seventh century.

The site also preserves the contrast between Roman urban planning and later layers of belief, conflict, and rebuilding. From the main axis between the eastern and western gates, you can picture roads once filled with merchants, artisans, soldiers, priests, and miners.