North Macedonia

This land sat on the Byzantine frontier for centuries, and Ohrid became a cradle of Slavic Christianity and letters, where the disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius taught and, tradition says, 365 churches were built. Bulgarian and Serbian empires held the region in turn — Skopje was briefly a Serbian imperial capital — before some five centuries of Ottoman rule left the mosques, hammams, and covered bazaars of the old towns.

As Ottoman power receded, the "Macedonian Question" — who the region's Slavs were, and which neighbouring state they belonged to — turned violent, through the revolutionary VMRO, the 1903 Ilinden Uprising and its short-lived Kruševo Republic, and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, which partitioned Macedonia among Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria. The Vardar portion joined Yugoslavia, and under socialist Yugoslavia it was made a republic with a recognised Macedonian nation, a codified language, and its own Orthodox Church.

Independence came peacefully in 1991 — the only Yugoslav republic to leave without war — but was overshadowed for nearly three decades by Greece's objection to the name "Macedonia", which blocked NATO and EU membership. A brief 2001 conflict with ethnic-Albanian insurgents was ended by the Ohrid Framework Agreement, which expanded Albanian rights. A nationalist government's costly "Skopje 2014" building spree ended in corruption scandals, and in 2018 the Prespa Agreement renamed the country North Macedonia, allowing it to join NATO in 2020 and to open EU accession talks — which have since stalled again, this time over Bulgarian demands about history and identity.

Two main communities live largely side by side: Orthodox Macedonians and Muslim Albanians, with smaller Turkish, Roma, and Vlach populations. Macedonian folk culture is rich in polyphonic singing, the oro chain dance, the shawm-and-drum zurla and tapan, and the brass bands of the south; the Galičnik wedding, revived each July in a mountain village, is a showcase of costume and ritual. Icon-painting and church-building have a long tradition centred on Ohrid, whose frescoes are among the finest in the Orthodox world.

Albanian western towns have their own music, weddings, and religious life, including a strong Bektashi tradition. Coffee is taken slowly and at length, hospitality is generous, and the autumn ritual of ajvar-making — roasting and milling red peppers into a relish, put up by the jarful — is close to a national event.

Basketball and handball are the big spectator sports, along with football, and the mountains keep an old hunting and herding culture.

With under two million people and heavy emigration, North Macedonia can feel like a country steadily losing its young. Skopje — rebuilt on a modernist plan after a devastating 1963 earthquake, then given a contested neoclassical facade in the 2010s — holds a third of the population and most of the jobs; Bitola, Tetovo, Kumanovo, Ohrid, and Štip are the other centres.

The economy runs on foreign-owned factories in special economic zones, making car parts, wiring, and catalysts, along with textiles, agriculture — tobacco, wine, peppers, lamb, and early vegetables — mining, and money sent home by the diaspora. Wages are low by EU standards, unemployment has long been high, and corruption and weak courts are the recurring criticism from Brussels.

Winter brings a tangible problem: Skopje and Tetovo, sitting in basins under temperature inversions, with wood and coal heating and old cars, record some of the worst air quality in Europe.

Macedonian cooking is Balkan and Ottoman-influenced, built around grilled meat, peppers, beans, and dairy. Tavče gravče, beans baked in an earthenware dish with paprika, is the national dish; ajvar is on every table; and šopska salad — tomato, cucumber, onion, and grated white sirenje cheese — starts most meals.

The grill turns out kebapi, pleskavica, and šiš, and pastrmajlija, a boat-shaped bread topped with diced pork, is a speciality of Štip. Burek and other filled pita, stuffed peppers and vine leaves, and vegetable-and-meat stews round out the table. Lake Ohrid supplies trout — including the endemic, protected Ohrid trout — and tiny fried whitebait.

Wine is a serious business, centred on the Tikveš region and its Vranec and Temjanika grapes; rakija is the spirit, and Turkish-style coffee ends the meal.

Lake Ohrid, shared with Albania, is the country's jewel and a World Heritage Site for both its nature and its culture. The old town of Ohrid climbs from the water to Tsar Samuel's fortress past Byzantine churches — Sveti Jovan Kaneo on its cliff, Sveta Sofia, Sveti Kliment — an ancient theatre, and, near the Albanian border, the spring-fed monastery of Sveti Naum.

Skopje offers the Ottoman Old Bazaar, the Stone Bridge, the Kale fortress, the fifteenth-century Mustafa Pasha Mosque, a memorial to Mother Teresa, who was born in the city, and the polarising statuary of the "Skopje 2014" project. Bitola, the elegant former consular city, sits beside the Roman ruins of Heraklea Lyncestis below Pelister National Park.

The mountains — Mavrovo National Park with its ski slopes and the half-submerged church at Mavrovo Lake, the Šar range on the Kosovo border, and Korab, the highest peak — offer hiking and skiing. Closer to the capital are the Millennium Cross above Skopje, the Kokino megalithic observatory, and the Matka Canyon, with its caves and kayaking a short drive out of town.