Pristina

Pristina [pɾiʃtiːna] (Albanian Prishtina or Prishtinë; Serbian Приштина Priština; German obsolete also Prischtina) is the capital of the Republic of Kosovo and with over 145,000 inhabitants also the largest city of the state.

Pristina is the seat of government and thus the political centre of the country. The city is home to the seat of government, the seat of parliament and the official residence of the president. It is also home to the headquarters of the UNMIK and OSCE missions in the state. Situated in the centre of the Blackbird Field, Pristina is also a transport hub and the economic and cultural centre of the Republic of Kosovo.

The municipality of Pristina, which has a population of just under 200,000, includes 41 surrounding villages in addition to the city area. Pristina is also the capital of a district.

Geography

Pristina is located east of central Kosovo in the historic landscape of Blackbird Field (Albanian Rrafsh i Kosovës, Serbian Косово Поље Kosovo Polje) at 595 m a.s.l. The city is surrounded by the fertile plains of this region, with only the hills of Zhegoc (Serbian Žegovac) rising to the east. There are no rivers in the town. The rivers that existed until the 1950s, the Pristina and the Vellusha, were largely covered by rubbish and soil and disappeared from the cityscape. The two once flowed into the Sitnica, which flows west of the city area to the northwest. Southeast of Pristina in the Zhegoc mountains is Lake Badovac, a reservoir about 5.5 kilometers long.

Community structure

Climate

Pristina has a temperate continental climate with an average annual temperature of 10.4 °C and total annual precipitation of almost 600 mm. In July the average temperature is 20 °C, in January -0.6 °C.

Population

Pristina is the most populous city in the country and has 145,149 inhabitants in the urban area according to the 2011 census. Of these, 141,307 (97.35%) identified themselves as Albanian, 2052 (1.41%) as Turkish, 597 (0.41%) as Roma, Ashkali or Balkan Egyptian, 366 (0.25%) as Bosniak, 204 (0.14%) as Goran and 92 (0.06%) as Serb. 281 persons belonged to other ethnic groups, 73 did not give any answer on ethnicity and no data is available from 177 in this regard.

The religion with the most followers is Islam. 140,786 people (96.99%) counted themselves as Muslims in 2011. The largest religious minority are the Catholics with 985 persons (0.68 %).

Of the population over 15 years of age, 51.25% are employed. Of these, 27.67% are unemployed.