Serbia, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo: Danube fortresses, Orthodox monasteries, synagogues, mosques, Roman palaces and old towns.
45 programs
Set on low hills above the Albanian coastal plain, Apollonia was founded by Greek settlers in ancient Illyria and prospered under Rome. Its excavated centre, dominated by a restored colonnaded facade, adjoins a medieval monastery church that now shelters the site museum.
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Perched on a hill above the plain not far from Tirana, the castle of Preza keeps its walls and its tower, and shelters within them a small mosque with a slender minaret. Fortress and place of prayer share a single enclosure, and a commanding view of the country below.
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Dedicated to Saint Demetrius, a martyr honoured throughout the Orthodox world, this cathedral gathers the whole vocabulary of Eastern Christian building: a domed volume, an iconostasis separating nave from sanctuary, painted walls, and the slow choreography of the liturgy.
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Founded in the Ottoman period as the commercial core of Sarajevo, Bascarsija is a grid of low workshops, courtyards and alleys where crafts are still practised. Around the Sebilj fountain, mosques, caravanserais and coffee houses hold the city's oldest daily rhythms.
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In the hills of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this open-air ethno village gathers traditional houses, workshops, tools and household objects on a single site. It presents rural life not as a display case but as a set of gestures, materials and skills that can still be demonstrated.
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The old city of Mostar is organised around a single arch of stone thrown across the Neretva in the sixteenth century, destroyed in 1993 and rebuilt using traditional methods. Reopened in 2004, the bridge and its quarter are inscribed on the World Heritage List.
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On the Danube at Vidin stands Baba Vida, the best-preserved medieval fortress in Bulgaria. Inland at Kula, the remains of Castra Martis mark a late Roman fort. Together they show how the same frontier was defended by two empires, many centuries apart.
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The cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky dominates central Sofia with its gilded and green domes. Built in the neo-Byzantine manner in memory of the soldiers fallen in the war that led to Bulgaria's liberation, it also holds one of the country's finest collections of icons.
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Rising straight from the Danube at Vidin, Baba Vida is the best-preserved medieval fortress in Bulgaria. Its walls, towers, moat and courtyards can still be walked from end to end, on a site that had already been fortified in Roman times.
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This programme pairs two fortified sites of north-western Bulgaria: Castra Martis, a late Roman fort at Kula, and Baba Vida, the medieval castle on the Danube at Vidin. Read together, they trace the long defence of a frontier region across successive empires.
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Small, richly coloured and unmistakably Russian, the church of Saint Nicholas the Miracle-Maker stands in central Sofia with its gilded onion domes and tiled facades. In its crypt lies a venerated tomb where visitors leave handwritten petitions.
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Standing in the heart of Plovdiv, the Dzhumaya Mosque is among the oldest Ottoman religious buildings in the Balkans. Its lead-covered domes, painted interior and single minaret rise directly from a pedestrian square built over the remains of a Roman stadium.
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Plovdiv is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe, and it wears its history in layers. At its centre, the Dzhumaya Mosque, one of the oldest Ottoman mosques in the Balkans, stands a few steps from the excavated end of a Roman stadium.
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Set on high ground in north-western Bulgaria, the Kaleto complex preserves the traces of a fortified settlement occupied across many periods. Walls, gates and foundations, partly reconstructed, allow visitors to read the successive lives of a single defensive site.
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This programme pairs the fortified archaeological complex of Kaleto with the Vrachanski Balkan Nature Park, a limestone massif of gorges, caves, waterfalls and cliffs. Together they show how a defensive site and its landscape were always one and the same thing.
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The Vrachanski Balkan Nature Park protects a karst massif of caves, gorges and vertical cliffs in north-western Bulgaria. Within the same landscape, the Kaleto archaeological complex preserves the fortifications of a site whose position was determined by the rock.
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In central Sofia stands one of the largest Sephardic synagogues in Europe: horseshoe arches, patterned brickwork and an interior washed in coloured light. The film reads the building as architecture and as the record of a community.
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Varna's Orthodox cathedral rises above the Black Sea port with domes, a bell tower and a painted interior. The film follows its silhouette, its icons and its place in the life of the city.
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The Hadum Mosque stands at the centre of Gjakova's historic bazaar quarter, one of the landmarks of Ottoman-era Kosovo. Damaged during the conflict of the late twentieth century, it has since been restored and returned to worship.
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Below the slopes of Mount Rumija, the old town of Bar was abandoned after conflict and lies in ruins. Churches, a mosque, an aqueduct and a clock tower record the successive powers that ruled this stretch of the Adriatic.
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Dedicated to Saint Tryphon, patron of Kotor, the cathedral stands at the heart of the walled city on the Bay of Kotor. Its twin bell towers, Romanesque interior and treasury make it the principal monument of the old town.
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On the Bay of Kotor, the island of Saint George faces its celebrated neighbour offshore from Perast, a town of Baroque palaces built by sea captains. Nearby Risan preserves Roman mosaics from a much older settlement.
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The Ohrid region, in North Macedonia, is inscribed on the World Heritage List for both its natural and its cultural value. This second film continues the exploration of its churches, monasteries, fortress and shoreline.
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Skopje carries its history in visibly distinct layers: an Ottoman quarter of bazaar, hammams and caravanserais, a stone bridge over the Vardar, a modernist city rebuilt after a devastating earthquake, and a recent monumental building campaign.
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Ringed by water and marshland in the flat north of Serbia, Bač is among the best-preserved medieval fortresses of the Danube plain. Its brick curtain walls and tall keep record a frontier held, lost and held again.
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Justiniana Prima was founded by Emperor Justinian near his birthplace and raised to an archbishopric. Fortified, colonnaded and lavishly furnished with churches, it was abandoned barely a lifetime later and lay buried until modern excavation.
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Modelled on the medieval monastery church of Gračanica, St Mark's rises in the heart of Belgrade as a deliberate act of architectural memory. Inside, beneath its high vaults, lies the sarcophagus of Emperor Dušan.
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Behind massive fortified walls in the hills of eastern Serbia lies a late Roman imperial residence, complete with mosaic floors, baths and temples. Excavation has turned a farmer's field into one of the region's key ancient sites.
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Galerius raised this fortified palace near his birthplace and gave it his mother's name. Temples, baths and mosaic halls stand within the walls, while the hill above holds the mausolea where mother and son were consecrated.
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Standing on the ridge where the Sava joins the Danube, Belgrade Fortress has been rebuilt by Romans, Byzantines, Serbian rulers, Ottomans and Habsburgs. Today its ramparts enclose the city's most popular park.
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Niš was the birthplace of Constantine the Great and remained a strategic crossroads for every power that followed. Roman Mediana, an Ottoman fortress and stark memorials of later conflicts stand within a few kilometres of one another.
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The walls of Niš Fortress date from the Ottoman centuries but rest on far older foundations. Within the enclosure stands the Bali-beg Mosque, one of the city's oldest surviving Ottoman buildings, long used as an exhibition space.
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Built in the early twentieth century to designs by Lipót Baumhorn, the Novi Sad Synagogue is a major work of Hungarian Secession architecture. Its great dome and stained glass now shelter a concert hall as much as a memory.
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Facing Novi Sad across the Danube, Petrovaradin is one of Europe's great bastioned fortresses. Its ramparts, clock tower and vast underground galleries were designed to hold the river against any attacker.
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In the vineyards of eastern Serbia, the growers of Rajac built a settlement of stone cellars set apart from their homes. Lanes, gables and heavy timber doors form a village where only the wine ever lived.
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Rising above Liberty Square, the Catholic parish church of the Name of Mary gives Novi Sad its most recognisable silhouette. Neo-Gothic in style, it is crowned by a steep roof of glazed and patterned tiles.
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Raised in the fifteenth century as the capital of the Serbian Despotate, Smederevo is one of the largest lowland fortresses in Europe. Its triangular plan and twenty-odd towers still command the confluence with the Danube.
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With its twin towers and restrained baroque façade, the church of St Theresa of Ávila is the oldest major monument of Subotica and the seat of its Catholic diocese - a sober counterpoint to the city's later architecture.
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The stećci are monumental medieval tombstones carved with rosettes, arcades and dancing figures. At Perućac, above the Drina, one of the finest necropolises survives - part of a group inscribed as World Heritage by four countries together.
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Founded by Stefan Nemanja, Studenica is the most important monastic ensemble of medieval Serbia. Behind its circular walls stand marble churches whose thirteenth and fourteenth-century frescoes rank among the finest in Byzantine art.
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Designed by Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab, Subotica City Hall is a landmark of Hungarian Art Nouveau. Glazed ceramics, stained glass and folk-derived ornament cover a building that still runs the city.
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Built to designs by Komor and Jakab, the Subotica Synagogue is a rare complete expression of the Hungarian Secession applied to a house of worship. A long restoration campaign has returned its colour and light.
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One of the largest Orthodox churches in the world, the Temple of Saint Sava stands on the Vračar plateau, where the relics of Serbia's first archbishop were burned. Its dome and new mosaic interior dominate the capital.
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In southern Serbia, erosion has left a hillside covered with slender earth pyramids, each capped by a stone. Two extremely acidic springs and a well-known legend complete one of the country's strangest landscapes.
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Where the Banat plain finally rises, Vršac spreads beneath vine-covered slopes and a solitary medieval tower. Baroque streets, churches of two confessions and a long winemaking tradition define the town.
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