Lake Ohrid's poetry town — where the Black Drin begins and verse is celebrated
Struga sits at the southern end of Lake Ohrid where the Black Drin River exits — the only lake in the Balkans with an outflowing river, creating a remarkable confluence of mirror-flat lake water and rushing river at the town's heart. Struga is smaller and quieter than Ohrid but has its own strong cultural identity: the Struga Poetry Evenings festival, held every August since 1966, is one of the oldest and most prestigious poetry festivals in the world, attracting Nobel laureates and major poets. The old bazaar and the Constantine and Helen Church are quietly beautiful.
Struga (ancient Enchalon or Strunga) has been inhabited since at least the Hellenistic period. The town's position at the lake's outflow made it a centre for fishing and trading; Albanian and Macedonian communities coexisted for centuries under Ottoman rule. The Brothers Miladinov — Dimitar and Konstantin, 19th-century collectors of Macedonian folk songs who published the foundational collection of South Slavic oral poetry — were born in Struga. Their work was instrumental in the national awakening of Macedonian cultural identity. The Poetry Evenings festival was founded in their honour in 19…