Letter From Peć: The “Lost” Monasteries

The Serbian Orthodox monastery at Peć, now Peja, Kosovo. Photograph by Matthew Stevenson.

Before heading toward Skopje and my flight to Cyprus, I visited the two Orthodox monasteries for which Peja (as Peć) is famous—the Patriarchal Monastery of Peć and nearby (about 20 km) the Visoki Dečani Monastery, both remnants of the Serbian renaissance in the 14th century and, more recently, central rule in the Balkans from Belgrade—that which ended in a series of civil wars during the 1990s. In many ways...