SAINT-SAUVEUR CHURCH
This Serbian Orthodox church (Kisha e Shën Spasit, Црква Светог Спаса/Crkva Svetog Spasa) dominates the city from a small plateau below the Prizren fortress. Vandalized during the anti-Serbian riots of March 2004, it has since been partially restored with the help of Unesco. The church was founded in 1335 by Mladen Vladojević, a great Serbian nobleman and vassal of Emperor Stefan Dušan, when the latter had established his capital in the nearby fortress. It became a metoque (outbuilding) of the Holy Archangel Monastery, before being used as a stable in the early Ottoman era. Around 1770, the church was taken over by Aromanians (a Latin-speaking people from the Balkans) who had been exiled from southern Albania following the sacking of the Greco-Aroman city of Moscopole. In 1836, these new Orthodox arrivals began to enlarge the church and turn it into a basilica dedicated to the Trinity. But due to a fire around 1860, against the background of tensions between Serbian and Aromanian priests, the work was never completed. Two frescoes depicting Christ and the Mother of God, painted in 1335-1338 and then renovated in 2014, can be seen in the original small church in Byzantine style. The church consists of a three-winged naos in cloisonné apparatus (alternating brick and stone) surmounted by an octagonal dome mounted on a drum reaching 12 m in height. It is enclosed between the high roofless walls of the unfinished basilica, which itself has columns and a bell tower that reaches 18 m in height.
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