47 Fun Facts About North Macedonia

Skopje's giant bronze 'Warrior on a Horse' is understood to depict whom?

Alexander the Great. Officially the statue was only ever a 'warrior': the ancient king's legacy was one of the sore points in the quarrel with the country's southern neighbour, and a plaque naming him was added only later.

Which country shares North Macedonia's northern border with Serbia?

Kosovo. North Macedonia has five neighbours, and this is the newest: Skopje recognised Kosovo's independence in October 2008, months after it was declared, despite protests from Serbia.

Goran Pandev, North Macedonia's record goalscorer, won the Champions League in 2010 with which Italian club?

Inter Milan. Pandev arrived in early 2010 and won the league, cup and Champions League within months; a decade later his goal against Georgia sent North Macedonia to its first major tournament.

Which 2018 agreement, named after a lake, saw Macedonia add 'North' to its name?

Prespa. The two foreign ministers signed it in June 2018 in a border village on the lake's shore, with both prime ministers looking on; the new name took effect on 12 February 2019, ending a 27-year dispute.

Which country's objections drove the long dispute over the name Macedonia?

Greece has a northern region of its own called Macedonia and saw the name as a claim on it; in 1994 it went as far as a trade embargo on its new neighbour, lifted only when the two signed an interim accord in 1995.

Which North Macedonian film of 2019 was the first documentary nominated for both the documentary and international feature Oscars?

Honeyland. Over three years its makers filmed Hatidže Muratova, one of Europe's last keepers of wild bees, whose rule is to leave half the honey for the hive; a neighbour who ignores it brings ruin on both their colonies.

What was the result of Macedonia's 2018 referendum on its name?

90% approval but too low a turnout: a boycott held participation to about 37%, short of the 50% needed for the vote to count, so the decision passed to parliament, which approved the change by a two-thirds majority.

Which organisation did North Macedonia join as its 30th member in 2020?

NATO. The alliance had been ready to invite the country since its 2008 Bucharest summit, but the quarrel over the name held the invitation back for ten years; once the name changed, every member ratified within about a year.

After the name dispute was settled, which EU member blocked the start of North Macedonia's accession talks in November 2020?

Bulgaria. Sofia accused its neighbour of dragging its feet on a 2017 friendship treaty that touches on shared history; it lifted the veto in 2022 under a French compromise that asks for a Bulgarian minority to be named in the constitution.

In 1991 Macedonia alone left Yugoslavia without what?

A war. Voters backed independence on 8 September 1991, now Independence Day, and Belgrade neither sent the army in nor protested, while Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia all had to fight their way out.

Rebels who seized the town of Kruševo in the 1903 Ilinden Uprising proclaimed what?

A republic. The Kruševo Republic lasted from 3 to 13 August 1903 before Ottoman troops retook the town, and the day the uprising began, St Elijah's Day on 2 August, is now North Macedonia's Republic Day.

Macedonia entered the UN in 1993 under a provisional name shortened to what?

FYROM, short for 'the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia'. The stopgap wording let the country take its seat while its name was still disputed, and it stuck for 26 years, until the change to North Macedonia in 2019.

Which king of Macedon absorbed Pelagonia and the south of the Paeonian kingdom in 356 BC?

Philip II made the Paeonian king his subject that year, so the south of today's North Macedonia joined the ancient kingdom as conquered land; the kingdom's own heartland lay further south.

What 66-metre structure was built on Mount Vodno above Skopje in 2002 to mark 2,000 years of Christianity?

A cross. The Millennium Cross, one of the biggest in the world, stands on the mountain's highest point; covered in lights after dark, it can be seen from almost every part of the capital, and a lift now runs up inside it.

The Ohrid Literary School, founded by Saint Clement in 886, trained clergy to hold services in which language?

Old Church Slavonic. Until then services had been held in Greek by clergy sent from Byzantium; Clement is said to have taught some 3,500 pupils in seven years, in what is often called the first Slavic school of higher learning.

Which tsar, whose fortress still crowns the old town, made Ohrid his capital before Basil II's victory of 1014?

Samuil. After the defeat at Kleidion in 1014, Basil II had thousands of captured soldiers blinded and sent home; the tsar died two months later, reportedly of a heart attack brought on by the sight of them.

Skopje served as capital of which 14th-century emperor's realm?

Stefan Dušan of Serbia had himself crowned emperor in Skopje in 1346, at the peak of his conquests; the empire began to break up after his sudden death in 1355, and within decades the Ottomans held the region.

Ottoman rule over what is now North Macedonia ended with which conflict?

The Balkan Wars of 1912-13 drove the Ottomans out but brought no independence: the victors divided the wider region of Macedonia among themselves, and the part that is now North Macedonia went to Serbia.

Macedonia's Jews, nearly all deported to Treblinka in March 1943, spoke Ladino, a language their ancestors had brought from which country?

Spain. The community grew from Sephardic refugees welcomed by the Ottomans after the expulsions of the 1490s; in March 1943 the occupying authorities held some 7,200 of them in a Skopje tobacco warehouse before the trains left.

The Tikveš plain around the towns of Kavadarci and Negotino is the heart of which North Macedonian industry?

Winemaking. Long, hot summers ripen the grapes on the Tikveš plain, where wine has been made since antiquity; the winery named after the plain dates from 1885.

A gunman from the Macedonian group IMRO shot King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in which French port in 1934?

Marseille. Vlado Chernozemski opened fire as the king's car crawled through the crowd at the start of a state visit, and a newsreel cameraman a few metres away kept filming: it was one of the first assassinations caught on camera.

Since the 1960s, an international festival in the lakeside town of Struga has awarded its Golden Wreath to masters of which art?

Poetry. The Struga Poetry Evenings honour the Miladinov brothers, poets born in the town; laureates such as W. H. Auden, Pablo Neruda and Seamus Heaney each have a memorial board in its Park of Poetry.

Macedonian, North Macedonia's national language, is written in which script?

Cyrillic. The Macedonian version, with 31 letters, was adopted only on 5 May 1945, when the language was first given an official standard; the date is now kept as Macedonian Language Day.

Which peak on the western border is the highest in North Macedonia?

Mount Korab, 2,764 metres high, is the roof of two countries at once, since the border runs along it and neither neighbour has anything higher; its outline appears on North Macedonia's coat of arms.

Which river drains most of North Macedonia's territory to the Aegean Sea?

The Vardar runs the length of the country, through Skopje and on to the Aegean, and its valley carries the main road and railway south, the same corridor that traders and armies have followed since antiquity.

Lake Ohrid, the deepest lake in the Balkans, also ranks among Europe's what?

Oldest: the lake has existed for well over a million years, long enough for more than 200 species found nowhere else, among them the Ohrid trout, to evolve in its waters.

Lake Ohrid's Macedonian shore received which international designation in 1979?

World Heritage site. UNESCO listed the lake for its nature in 1979 and added the town's churches and old quarter in 1980, which makes Ohrid one of the rare sites inscribed for both nature and culture.

Ohrid's legendary 365 churches earned it which nickname?

Jerusalem of the Balkans. The count, one church for each day of the year, goes back at least to the 17th-century Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi; far fewer stand today, but they still hold hundreds of Byzantine-style icons.

Which disaster struck Skopje in 1963, killing over 1,000 people?

An earthquake struck at 5:17 on the morning of 26 July 1963 and left about 80 percent of the city in ruins; relief came from 78 countries, and rebuilt Skopje became known as the City of International Solidarity.

Which Japanese architect won a United Nations competition in 1965 with his master plan for rebuilding central Skopje?

Kenzo Tange. Fresh from his Tokyo Olympic arenas, he proposed ringing the centre with a 'City Wall' of housing blocks; only parts of the plan were built, among them the wall and the new railway station.

What was the 'Skopje 2014' project?

A neoclassical makeover of the city centre: between 2010 and 2014 the government put up well over a hundred facades, fountains and statues to give the capital a grander, older look; its successors called a halt in 2018.

Skopje grew out of a Roman colony of the 1st century AD known by what name?

Scupi. The town was settled with army veterans under the emperor Domitian and became the chief Roman centre of Dardania; its ruins lie a few kilometres from the modern city centre.

Which future Catholic saint was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910?

Mother Teresa left Skopje at 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland, sailed on to India within months and spent the rest of her life there; she was canonised in 2016, nineteen years after her death.

What appears on the flag of North Macedonia?

A yellow sun with eight rays replaced the sixteen-rayed Vergina Sun in 1995: the southern neighbour claimed the older emblem, found at the burial ground of Macedon's ancient kings, and kept up an embargo until the flag changed.

What is ajvar, a staple condiment of North Macedonia and the Balkans?

It is made principally from sweet bell peppers and eggplant.

A Skopje club won Europe's Champions League in 2017 and 2019 in which sport?

Handball. The Skopje club won its first title in 2017 with a goal in the final second against Paris Saint-Germain, and its second by beating Hungary's Veszprém 27-24 two years later.

Who became North Macedonia's first female president in May 2024?

Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, a law professor, beat the sitting president with nearly 65% of the vote; at her swearing-in she called the country simply 'Macedonia', reopening the quarrel the 2018 name deal was meant to end.

Which prime minister took Macedonia into the 2018 agreement that changed the country's name?

Zoran Zaev struck the deal and got the change through parliament by the two-thirds majority it needed; he resigned after his Social Democrats lost local elections in 2021.

Which faith, followed by about a third of North Macedonia's people, is the country's second-largest after Orthodox Christianity?

Islam. About 32% of the population were recorded as Muslim in the 2021 census, most of them from the country's largest minority communities, a legacy of five centuries of Ottoman rule.

The name Macedonia is usually traced to an ancient word meaning what?

Tall or highlander: the ancient Makedones are usually explained as 'the tall ones' or 'the highlanders', from the root that also gives the prefix macro-, a fair name for mountain people, though some linguists doubt the derivation.

What is the currency of North Macedonia?

Denar. Launched in April 1992 as a stopgap to replace the Yugoslav dinar at par, it was re-issued a year later at one new denar for a hundred old; the name is a single vowel away from the dinar it replaced.

Which minority language became co-official across North Macedonia in 2019?

Albanian. Its speakers are about a quarter of the population, and the 2001 Ohrid peace deal that ended an armed uprising promised them wider language rights; a law in force from January 2019 extended official use nationwide.

Tavče gravče, widely considered North Macedonia's national dish, is a clay-pot bake of which main ingredient?

Beans. They are boiled, mixed with onion and dried red pepper, then baked in the shallow earthenware pan, the tava, that the dish is named for and served in.

Which fruit brandy, often distilled at home, is North Macedonia's traditional spirit?

Rakija. Families distil it at home from grapes or plums and pour a glass for neighbours and guests; the home-made kind can be far stronger than the 40% sold in shops.

In which Macedonian city did the Manaki brothers, pioneers of Balkan cinema, shoot their early films?

Bitola, then the Ottoman city of Monastir. It honours the brothers every year with a film festival devoted to cinematographers, and its Ottoman military school once counted the teenage Mustafa Kemal Atatürk among its cadets.

Ohrid's airport is named after which apostle, who in the Bible sees a vision of a 'man of Macedonia' asking for help?

St. Paul. In the Acts of the Apostles he is at Troas when a man of Macedonia appears to him in the night, pleading 'Come over and help us', and he sets sail for Europe at once.

What is North Macedonia's 120-seat parliament called?

The Sobranie. Its members sit for four years and choose the government, so although the president is directly elected, real power lies with the prime minister who commands the chamber.