for around five centuries being a province of the ottoman empire, numerous examples of ottoman architecture existed in kosovo. in the aftermath of world war two, yugoslavia was governed by communist authorities who implemented various modernisation drives toward changing the architectural landscape and design of urban settlements. these measures were aimed at altering the panorama of a settlement that was deemed to have elements associated with an unwanted ottoman past and features deemed as "backward". starting from the late 1940s, architectural heritage in main urban centres of kosovo began to be destroyed, mainly conducted by the local government as part of urban modernisation schemes. during the 1950s this process was undertaken by the "urban planning institute" (urbanistički zavod) of yugoslavia with the most prominent example in kosovo of the socialist modernisation drive being in prishtinë. the ottoman prishtina bazaar contained 200 shops set in blocks devoted to a craft or guild owned by albanians grouped around a mosque, located in the centre of prishtinë. these buildings were expropriated in 1947 and demolished by labour brigades known as "popular fronts" (albanian: "fronti populluer", serbian: "narodnifront").