North Macedonia

North Macedonia is a landlocked bowl of mountains drained by the Vardar, which runs south-east across the country towards the Aegean. Lake Ohrid, in the south-west, is among the oldest and deepest lakes in Europe, with species found nowhere else, and Lake Prespa lies higher still beyond the ridge of Galičica. The Šar Mountains wall off the north-west. Tobacco and peppers grow on the Pelagonia plain around Bitola, and vineyards cover the hot Tikveš basin.

The Roman towns of Stobi and Heraclea Lyncestis keep their floor mosaics. Ohrid became a centre of Slavonic learning in the late ninth century, when Clement and Naum, disciples of Cyril and Methodius, taught there. Ottoman rule lasted from the late fourteenth century to the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, after which the land passed to Serbia and then Yugoslavia. An earthquake levelled much of Skopje in July 1963. Independence came in 1991, and in 2019 the country took the name North Macedonia.

Orthodox monasteries such as St Panteleimon at Nerezi, with its twelfth-century frescoes, stand alongside Ottoman mosques like the Painted Mosque of Tetovo. Folk dances move in long chains to uneven rhythms, and the Romani singer Esma Redžepova carried the songs of Šuto Orizari around the world. Mother Teresa was born in Skopje in 1910. Each autumn households roast red peppers for ajvar. Tobacco from Prilep, red wine from the Vranec grape, lead and zinc ore, and catalysts for car exhausts head the export list.