Gračanica Monastery

Gračanica Monastery, near Pristina in Kosovo, is one of the masterpieces of medieval Serbian architecture and painting. It was built around 1321 as the foundation of King Stefan Uroš II Milutin, on the site of an earlier church. Its church rises in a stepped arrangement of vaults and domes to a tall central dome, a clear example of the late Byzantine style in Serbian lands. The interior was painted in the early fourteenth century, by most accounts by a workshop connected with the painters Michael Astrapas and Eutychios. It includes extensive Gospel cycles, the Last Judgement, the Tree of Jesse and a famous genealogy of the Nemanjić dynasty, with portraits of King Milutin and Queen Simonida. Gračanica is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Medieval Monuments in Kosovo, which is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. This section examines the church's history, its painted programme and the questions of conservation it faces today.