Samodreža

Samodreža Самодрежа
village
Church of St. John the Baptist interior ruins
Coordinates: 42°49′24″N 21°02′51″E / 42.8233°N 21.0475°ECoordinates: 42°49′24″N 21°02′51″E / 42.8233°N 21.0475°E
Country	Kosovo[lower-alpha 1]
District	District of Mitrovica

Samodreža (Serbian Cyrillic: Самодрежа) or Samadrexha (in Albanian), is a village in the Vučitrn municipality in Kosovo. It is inhabited by a majority of ethnic Albanians, of Muslim faith. The local Serbian Orthodox church, Church of St. John the Baptist has been used as a dumping ground and public toilet.^[1] According to Serbian myth, the church was used as a praying place for Prince Lazar of Serbia and his knights before the Battle of Kosovo (1389).^[2]

Notes

1. Kosovo is the subject of a territorial dispute between the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia. The Republic of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on 17 February 2008, but Serbia continues to claim it as part of its own sovereign territory. The two governments began to normalise relations in 2013, as part of the Brussels Agreement. Kosovo has been recognised as an independent state by 108 out of 193 United Nations member states.

References

1. "Црква у Самодрежи поново претворена у јавни тоалет". (Serbian)
2. Cultural monuments in Serbia: The Church of St. John the Baptist (web-page of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts) (Serbian)

External links

• Media related to Samodreža at Wikimedia Commons