Prizren has been traditionally identified with the settlement of Theranda in Roman Dardania, although other locations have been suggested in recent research.

In late antiquity it was part of the defensive fortification system in western Dardania and the fort was reconstructed in the era of eastern Roman Emperor Justinian.

Byzantine rule in the region ended definitively in 1219-20 as the Serbian Nemanjić dynasty took control of the fort and the town.

[3][4][5] Hamp has suggested that the name of the city roughly meant "ford-horned animal" with the IE root *ḱrn "horn, horned-thing" (cf.

[11] At this time, the Prizren fortress likely appears in historical record as Petrizen in the 6th century CE in the work of Procopius as one of the fortifications which Justinian commissioned to be reconstructed in Dardania.

[9] Konstantin Jireček concluded, from the correspondence of archbishop Demetrios Chomatenos (1216–36), that Prizren was the northeasternmost area of Albanian settlement prior to the Slavic migrations to the Balkans that began in the 6th century.

In 1072, the leaders of the Bulgarian Uprising of Georgi Voiteh traveled from their center in Skopje to the area of Prizren and held a meeting in which they invited Mihailo Vojislavljević of Duklja to send them assistance.

Dalassenos Doukas, dux of Bulgaria was sent against the combined forces, but was defeated near Prizren, which was then extensively plundered by the Serbian army.

[24][25] The ecclesiastical split of Prizren from the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1219 was the final act of establishing Serbian Nemanjić rule in the town.

[28] Prizen briefly served as the capital of the Serbian Empire and was a crossroad of important trade goods between Dubrovnik and Constantinople.

Entire Albanian villages were gifted by Serbian kings, particularly Stefan Dušan, as presents to Serb monasteries within Prizren, Deçan and Tetova.

[32] Additionally, people with Albanian anthroponomy are repeatedly mentioned in a 1348 chrysobull of Stefan Dušan that lists those who pray at the monastery of St. Michael and Gabriel in Prizren as well as some of the inhabitants of the city itself and the surrounding villages.

In one of Stefan Dušan's documents in 1355, a soldier with Albanian anthroponomy is exclusively mentioned as one of the people who must continuously pay the Monastery of St. Nicholas in the village of Billushë near Prizren.

[33] People with Albanian anthroponomy are also mentioned in a 1452 register within the vicinity of Prizren in villages such as Mazrek, Kojushe, Milaj, Zhur, Xerxe, Pllaneje, Gorozhup, Zym etc.

[35] With the death of Stefan Uroš V in 1371, a series of competing regional nobles sieged, counter-sieged and held control of Prizren – increasingly with Ottoman support and intervention.

[39] In 1624 Pjeter Mazrreku reported the town was inhabited by 12,000 Muslims, almost all of them Albanians (‘Turchi, quasi tutti Albanesi’), 200 Catholics and 600 'Serviani'.

[43][40] Documents and dispatches refer to the Austrians marching to "Prizren, the capital of Albania" where they were welcomed by Bogdani and 5,000-6,000 Albanian soldiers.

Although the troops met little resistance, the takeover was bloody, with 400 people dead in the first few days; the local population would call the city "The Kingdom of Death.

A few visitors did make it through, including Leon Trotsky, then working as a journalist for the Ukrainian newspaper Kijewskaja mysl, and reports eventually emerged of widespread killings of Albanians.

[50] In a 1912 news report on the Serbian Army and the Paramilitary Chetniks in Prizren, Trotsky stated "Among them were intellectuals, men of ideas, nationalist zealots, but these were isolated individuals.

The Serbs in Old Serbia, in their national endeavour to correct data in the ethnographical statistics that are not quite favourable to them, are engaged quite simply in systematic extermination of the Muslim population".

Durham stated: "I asked wounded Montengrins [Soldiers] why I was not allowed to go and they laughed and said 'We have not left a nose on an Albanian up there!'

Eventually Durham visited a northern Albanian outpost in Kosovo where she met captured Ottoman soldiers whose upper lips and noses had been cut off.

[56] According to Catholic Archbishop of Skopje, Lazër Mjeda who was taking refuge in Prizren at the time, roughly 1,000 people had died of hunger in 1917.

For many years after the restoration of Serbian rule, Prizren and the region of Dečani to the west remained centres of Albanian nationalism.

The "Prizren trial" became something of a cause célèbre after it emerged that a number of leading Yugoslav Communists had allegedly had contacts with the accused.

Before the war, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe estimated that the municipality's population was about 78% Kosovo Albanian, 5% Serb and 17% from other national communities.

[62] Much of Potkaljaja, the old Serb neighbourhood along the hillside in the centre of town, was looted and burned to the ground following the Yugoslav Army withdrawal.

The primary health sector has 475 employees, including doctors, nurses and support staff, 264 female and 211 male.

Several art and music festivals and conferences are held in the city, including the 40BunarFest and NGOM Fest, with the main objectives to promote artists and to connect the different ethnic groups in the surrounding region.