We continued on our way to the capital of Macedonia – Skopje.
What impressed me at first sight while driving to the apartment we had booked were the Macedonian flags hanging from almost everywhere. Another thing that made me curious was that the main highway was named after Alexander the Great.
When you are surrounded by so many national symbols and flags you may feel that people who live in Macedonia not only love their country and history, but they try to show as much as they can from their past to everyone who is visiting the country. Moreover, by repeating again and again the names of many historical persons they create the image of an old and diverse cultural heritage.
In Skopje you can see and hear the name of Alexander the Great and Mother Teresa almost everywhere. It seems that Macedonians consider Alexander the Great for their national hero (there are still some discussions about the origin of Alexander, is he a Greek or Macedonian?) and keep in high honor Mother Teresa. Although Macedonia itself is just a small Balkan country it has many stories to share and lessons to teach us as travelers.
We reached pretty late Skopje and it was already dark outside. Although we were quite tired we went out for a short walk to see the center of Skopje at night and have dinner. The city was quite different during the day so I definitely advise you to experience Skopje at night as well.
Let me briefly share with you what I saw for the few days
I was in Skopje that impressed me most.
Statues and monuments everywhere!!! I am not sure how many we saw while walking around the city. We stopped counting after we reached 20-30. We started making photos with the best looking until we finally got tired and bored.
I was really shocked when I went out around the center at night…not only because there were so many monuments (you may feel like someone suspicious is looking at you all the time), but many of them that were recently put on the main square and also freshly renovated buildings nearby were painted in different colors. It was such a pity that something new that was created to attract tourists and recall the past got painted in such an ugly way.
It seemed a protest by the locals and as far as I understood it was not the first time the municipality needed to clean this mess. Either they didn’t like the monuments or the large amount of money that was spent for the full transformation of the city center. The so called project “Skopje 2014” was financed by the Government of the Republic of Macedonia with the main purpose to build museums and erect monuments of historical figures from the region. Despite the idea was good, its realization (about 130 structures were built) brought much criticism and cost a lot of money (around 600-700 $ million).
Now back to the night walking tour. The first thing we noticed when we approached the main square were the sparkling colorful lights coming from a large fountain with a huge bronze statue of Alexander the Great riding his horse Bucephalus on the top of it. This massive bronze monument is the largest statue of Alexander the Great in the world (it is 14.5 m tall).
The fountain represented the great conqueror surrounded by eight warriors. We looked more closely to the statue and saw that the face of Alexander the Great was turned to the East. I read that it is considered that he is looking to Asia more precisely to Persia. Moreover, one of the soldiers was Alexander’s father Philip II who was showing with his sword the direction to the other warriors - to the South, to Greece. The warriors and Alexander the Great were encircled by eight lions – four of them are roaring (releasing water from their mouths) and the other four lions were standing like guards of the fountain….of course everything was well covered in paint (their eyes were painted red like vampire lions).
Although some people consider this fountain too bombastic and a cliché it does represents the history of these lands that we explore now like tourists.
This spectacular fountain was officially unveiled on the 8th of September 2011 on the 20-year anniversary of Macedonia’s Independence. This date is memorable for all Macedonians as they celebrate the Independence Day when a Referendum for Independence was signed. Macedonia gained its independence from Yugoslavia where it was a federal state. For more info check on the Internet as it is a long story and each involved country has its own point of view to this matter. When we talk about politics things are quite complicated.
The main square was gorgeous, despite it was crowded with so many statues. We went on and reached the Stone Bridge which connected the center with the Old Bazaar. The view across the Vardar river at night was fantastic because of all these colorful lights coming from the fountains and some buildings around that reflected in the water.
The Stone Bridge is one of those sights of the capital that are really old and authentic. Some interesting info I found is that this bridge has been damaged and renovated many times. The first foundations were made around 1469 by initiative of Sultan Mehmed II. During the Second World War some explosives were places on the bridge but eventually they were found and was saved from destruction. Another curious fact is that some executions were made on the Stone Bridge. The rebellion leader Karposh was executed in 1689 on the bridge (We saw his statue at one end of the bridge).
We crossed the bridge and went to see more closely The National Archaeological Museum of Macedonia. This building looked amazing at night as it was shining in different colors. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to go inside during the day, but as far as I understood there you can find more than 6000 artifacts that are presented to the public on three floors – wax figures, paintings, coin collections and etc.
On the left side of the museum we found more statues! This time there were nine muses from the Greek Mythology who give inspiration of literature, arts and philosophy.
Moving on we heard some delightful music coming from the so called Skopje Art Bridge. On both sides of the bridge we saw many statues of musicians, painters, artists and others (28 in total +1 in the middle). Although we didn’t know most of them (I recognized the Bulgarian poet Nikola Vapzarov though), the statues were nicely presented as some of them had interesting face expressions and postures.
Everything was illuminated and looked magically at night.
