Written by Christian Jennings
Originally published on Chasing the Donkey, a travel blog covering the Balkans.
When I first arrived in Kosovo for the first time nearly twenty-seven years ago, in June 1999, I was as a British journalist during the war. NATO’s fighter aircraft were criss-crossing the sky, tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanian refugees were pouring home from exile in Macedonia and Albania, and the towns and streets were jammed full of peacekeeping troops from thirty countries.
I never dreamt that all these years later I would be returning to discover that there is now a fantastic new museum that tells the dramatic and gripping story of those days.
Now, on Mother Theresa Avenue in the centre of Prishtina, just next to the big statue of Albanian fighter Skenderbeg on his horse, you can find Reporting House. It is an imposing, modern structure, curiously enough set inside an old Yugoslav department store. It has already attracted 30,000 visitors in the first two years since it opened, and the interior of the imposing old building is now stripped back to structural, quasi-industrial basics amply suited to its new contents.
Outside is a striking installation made from scarred timbers taken from houses burned in the war, while inside there are numerous fascinating artefacts that give the viewer a gripping visual explanation of what happened in Kosovo.
