Ura e Vjetër e Gurit

Ura e Vjetër e Gurit stands in the Kosovan town of Vushtrri and ranks among the region's few surviving medieval stone bridges. Legend credits two Vojinović brothers, nephews of Tsar Dušan in Serbian epic poetry, with raising it. Their lands lay elsewhere, yet family ties bound them to the Branković, who kept a court in town. Most researchers read the style of the build and date it to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. Some historians trace its earliest parts to Roman times, which would make it one of the oldest of its kind in Kosovo.

Soft limestone makes up most of the masonry, laid in alternating courses of red and grey. The whole structure stretches more than 135 metres and measures almost 5 metres across. Nine arches hold it up, most of them spanning nearly 13 metres. Two building phases show in the arches: five pointed ones from the original bridge, four semicircular ones added later. As a crossing it once carried the main trade route between Dubrovnik and Skopje. It also connected the villages under the Çyçavica mountains and, through the Klysyrë gorge, the Drenica region. In 1573 the French traveller Filip Difre-Kane wrote of arriving in Vushtrri and seeing a great stone bridge. Ottoman records from the late nineteenth century list two bridges over the Sitnica, one of wood and one of stone.

The Sitnica no longer flows beneath the arches. Erosion and sediment shifted the river's course, trimming the bridge's total length and leaving it on dry land. Protected as a monument of exceptional importance, it has seen no major conservation, so it survives much as the centuries left it. Where the river used to run, you can picture the caravans that crossed here on their way through the Balkans.