EX-HOTEL JADRAN

This building built in 1928 (Ish hotel Jadran, Bivši hotel Jadran) is located in the most lively area of South Mitrovica. Identifiable by its corner tower topped with a dome and the KFC logo, it is considered the most beautiful civil building in the city. Named Jadran (a Slavic variant of the first name Adrien) and inspired by the Viennese Secession style, it was the first real hotel in Mitrovica, which at the time retained its Ottoman town appearance. It was established by Serbian entrepreneur Lazar Žarković (1903-1962), a native of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who founded several businesses in the area in the 1920s-1930s. Nationalized in 1945, the hotel was later used as the headquarters of the local commercial company Lux, and later as the municipal library. Since 2017, it has housed a franchise of the American fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken and meeting rooms upstairs. On the ground floor, along the promenade, the Adriatik bakery created by Lazar Žarković (Furra Adriatiku) remains. In the square, opposite the former hotel, stands since 2001 the statue of the Albanian independence activist Mehë Uka (1962-1996) and, 90 m to the east, in Agim Hajrizi Street, is the house of Xhafer Deva (1904-1978) who was Minister of the Interior of fascist Albania in 1943-1944. Built in 1930, it may soon be transformed into a museum in honour of this politician who had hundreds of partisans executed and enlisted thousands of young Albanians in the ill-fated SS Skanderbeg division.