Banjska Terme

Banjska Terme draws bicarbonated thermal springs in the village of Banjska in northern Kosovo, close to the Ibar valley that formed one of the historical arteries of medieval Serbian culture, where the Monastery of Banjska founded by King Stefan Milutin in 1313 as a royal mausoleum was one of the most lavishly endowed religious foundations of the medieval Balkan world. The monastery was partially destroyed by Ottoman forces in the fifteenth century and its massive carved stonework and fragments of Byzantine mosaic survive as a testament to the short-lived peak of medieval Serbian civilisation before the Ottoman conquest that followed the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. The thermal springs of Banjska emerge in a landscape layered with memory, making a visit here more than simply a wellness stop but an encounter with the contested and storied history of the central Balkans.