Serbia

Dušan's Code, promulgated in 1349, is one of Europe's oldest legal codes, largely inspired by Roman-Byzantine law. The monasteries of Studenica and Sopoćani preserve frescoes often compared to Italian Trecento painting.

The Serbian kingdom and then empire reached their zenith under Dušan in the fourteenth century. The defeat at Kosovo Polje in 1389 became the founding national myth, and Ottoman rule settled in for four centuries.

The uprisings of 1804 and 1815 led to an autonomous principality and then to independence recognised in 1878. Serbia emerged victorious but bled dry from the First World War and formed the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

After Titoist Yugoslavia, the wars of the 1990s and the NATO bombing of 1999 isolated the country. Belgrade obtained candidate status in 2012 and opened negotiating chapters, with normalisation of relations with Kosovo remaining the central condition.