The Balkan jewel on Europe's most ancient lake — St. John at Kaneo on its clifftop, Byzantine frescoes in cave churches, Ohrid trout, and Macedonian wine by the water
Ohrid is a small lakeside city in southwestern North Macedonia on the shores of Lake Ohrid — one of the world's oldest and deepest lakes (estimated 4–10 million years old, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for both its natural and cultural significance, one of only 28 sites in the world with dual listing). The old town of Ohrid is a compact hill of medieval cobblestone streets, Byzantine churches (every 100 square metres of old town reportedly has a church — the city once had 365, one for each day of the year), Ottoman-era bays, and viewpoints over the lake. The Church of St. John the Th…
Ohrid was the capital of the First Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Samuel (980–1014 CE) when Bulgaria was one of the dominant powers of the medieval Balkans. Saints Clement and Naum — disciples of the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius who created the Glagolitic alphabet — established a literary and religious school at Ohrid in 893 CE, where they created the Cyrillic alphabet (the writing system now used by Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian, and dozens of other languages). Ohrid was thus one of the most important intellectual centres of medieval Europe. The city was taken by the Otto…