Ohrid & Prespa: the back story

Lake Ohrid has drawn builders, painters and scholars for well over a thousand years. Its churches, frescoes and shores tell that story one headland at a time.

Saints and scholars

Ohrid’s story long predates its churches: at the Bay of Bones, a prehistoric village built on wooden piles over the water has been partly rebuilt. Later, in the late 9th century, St Clement founded a monastery and school at Plaošnik, where early Christian mosaics still surround the church rebuilt in 2002. In 905 St Naum founded his own monastery at the lake’s southern tip.

Painted walls

St Sophia, once the cathedral of Ohrid’s medieval archbishops, keeps frescoes from the 11th century. Near the Upper Gate, the Holy Mother of God Perivlepta was painted in 1295 by Michael and Eutychios, whose expressive work marks a turning point in Byzantine art. Down on its rocky point, the 13th-century church of St John at Kaneo is the view everyone carries home.

Lake and mountain

Beyond the town, Galičica National Park rises between Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa, its pass road looking over both. At St Naum, boatmen row visitors over springs that bubble up through the sand, and at Struga the Black Drim slips out of the lake past a riverside promenade that hosts the Struga Poetry Evenings each August.

St Naum founded his monastery at the southern tip of the lake in 905.

Our advice: fly into Skopje and out of Ohrid’s St Paul the Apostle Airport to avoid doubling back.