Skopje: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
The Old Bazaar has been trading on the north bank since at least the twelfth century, and it is the largest surviving Ottoman market in the Balkans after Istanbul. It came through the fire of 1689, when an Austrian general burned Skopje to the ground, and through the earthquake of 1963 that destroyed most of the city across the river — the low stone buildings simply shook and stayed up. Two hours, and almost all of it is free.
A short history of Skopje
Near today's city stood the Roman town of Scupi, which was destroyed by an earthquake in 518. In 1346 Stefan Dušan was crowned Emperor of the Serbs in Skopje, and in 1392 the city was taken by the Ottomans and remained in their hands for more than five hundred years. In those years the Stone Bridge and the Old Bazaar, which still stand, were built. In 1910 Anjezë Bojaxhiu, later known as Mother Teresa, was born in the city. On 26 July 1963 an earthquake destroyed about 80 per cent of the city and killed more than a thousand people, and it was rebuilt to a plan by the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. In 1991 it became the capital of independent Macedonia, and in the decade after 2010 dozens of statues and buildings in classical style were built there.
The ten best sights in Skopje
1Stone BridgeFree, Ottoman on Roman foundations, and it is on the city’s flag
2Old BazaarFree, the largest in the Balkans after Istanbul, and trading since the 12th century
3Kale FortressFree, sixth century, and the stone came from the Roman city
4Mustafa Pasha MosqueFree, from 1492, and the garden has the best view of the bazaar
5Sultan Murat MosqueFree, from 1436, the oldest in the city, and the clock tower beside it
6Kuršumli AnFree, a 1550 caravanserai, and the name means lead from its domes
7Suli AnFree, fifteenth century, and the art academy is in it now
8Kapan AnFree, the oldest of the three, and the courtyard is all restaurants
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9Daut Pasha Hamam
100 denars, a 1490s bathhouse, and it is the national gallery
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10Čifte Hamam
100 denars, a double bathhouse, and the other half of the gallery
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Skopje →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Skopje:
Free walking tours in Skopje
The bazaar that outlived everything
The Old Bazaar has been trading on the north bank since at least the twelfth century, and it is the largest surviving Ottoman market in the Balkans after Istanbul. It came through the fire of 1689, when an Austrian general burned Skopje to the ground, and through the earthquake of 1963 that destroyed most of the city across the river — the low stone buildings simply shook and stayed up. Two hours, and almost all of it is free.
- Stone Bridge · Ottoman stonework of the fifteenth century standing on Roman foundations, and it is the one thing in Skopje that everyone agrees about — it appears on the city’s flag and its coat of arms. It links the Ottoman half of the city to the half the Austrians, the Serbs and then the architects of 2014 rebuilt.
- Kapan An · The oldest of the three surviving caravanserais, built in the fifteenth century, and the name comes from the Turkish for a weighing house — goods arriving by caravan were weighed and taxed in this courtyard before they could be sold. The rooms round the gallery were where the traders slept.
- Čifte Hamam · Čifte means double, and that is what it is: two complete bathhouses built side by side under one roof in the fifteenth century, one for men and one for women, each with its own entrance and its own domes. It has been the national gallery since 1948, and the light comes through star-shaped holes in the domes.
- Mustafa Pasha Mosque · Finished in 1492 by an Ottoman vizier, and the single dome spans sixteen metres without a pillar under it. It came through the 1963 earthquake with the minaret cracked but standing, and the garden outside holds the tomb of the vizier’s daughter and the best view down over the whole bazaar.
- Kuršumli An · Built about 1550 with sixty rooms around two courtyards, and the name means the leaded inn — the domes were covered in lead so they would not leak. In the nineteenth century the Ottomans turned it into a prison, and the iron rings they used are still set into the walls of the lower rooms.
- Kale Fortress · The walls are sixth century and they are built out of the Roman city of Scupi, which stood five kilometres away until an earthquake flattened it in 518 — so the stones in this fortress were cut for a city that an earthquake destroyed, in a city that an earthquake destroyed again in 1963.
Five seventeen in the morning
At 5.17 on the twenty-sixth of July 1963 an earthquake lasting twenty seconds destroyed about eighty per cent of Skopje and killed over a thousand people. Seventy-eight countries sent aid, the United Nations ran a competition for a new city centre and the Japanese architect Kenzō Tange won it, and only fragments of his plan were ever built. The result is a capital with almost no nineteenth century left in it. Two and a half hours, flat.
- Old Railway Station · Half the building was sheared away by the earthquake and the city left it exactly as it stood. The clock on the front has not moved since: it reads seventeen minutes past five, the moment the shaking started, and it is the single image the whole country uses for that morning.
- Museum of the City of Skopje · The museum is inside the ruined station, and the part of it about 1963 is made of the things people kept: a wristwatch stopped at the same time, the tents the city lived in for two winters, and the lists of which country sent what. Entry has been free since it opened.
- Museum of Contemporary Art · The collection exists because after the earthquake artists all over the world gave work to a city that had lost everything — Picasso, Hockney, Calder and about five thousand others sent pieces. Polish architects designed the building and gave the design for nothing, and it sits on the hill looking down at what was rebuilt.
- Macedonia Square · Between 2010 and 2014 the government put up more than twenty buildings and some hundred and thirty statues and monuments here in neoclassical and baroque styles, at an estimated cost of around half a billion euros in a country of two million people. The argument about whether it was nation-building or theatre has not ended.
- Warrior on a Horse · Twenty-two metres of bronze on a ten-metre plinth, cast in Florence and put up in 2011. Its official name is Warrior on a Horse and nothing else, because naming it Alexander the Great would have been a diplomatic act against Greece — and everybody, in both countries, knows exactly who it is.
- Memorial House of Mother Teresa · She was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910 to an Albanian family and lived here until she was eighteen. Her actual birth house was destroyed in the earthquake; this building stands on the site of the church where she was baptised, and the register recording the baptism is inside.
Up the mountain and into the canyon
Skopje is hemmed in by a mountain on one side and a river canyon on the other, and both are close enough to do in an afternoon — the cable car to the top of Vodno takes eight minutes, and the canyon at Matka is fifteen kilometres from the main square. Between them is a twelfth-century monastery whose frescoes argue with everything art history says about when the Renaissance started. Half a day, and a car or a bus for the canyon.
- Vodno cable car · Eight minutes from the middle station to the top, and the line was built in 2011 by a Swiss firm specifically to carry people to the cross. Before it, the only way up was a road with hairpins or a two-hour walk, and the mountain was mostly used by paragliders.
- Millennium Cross · Sixty-six metres of steel put up in 2002 to mark two thousand years of Christianity, and it stands on a spot called Krstovar — cross place — where a much smaller cross had stood since the Ottoman period. It is lit at night and visible from almost anywhere in the valley.
- Nerezi · The monastery church of St Panteleimon on this hillside was finished in 1164, and the frescoes in it show grief on people’s faces — a mother’s mouth open over a dead son — about a hundred and fifty years before Giotto did the same thing in Italy. Art historians have argued about them ever since they were cleaned in the 1920s.
- Matka · The canyon of the Treska river, five thousand hectares of it, with ten caves and a dozen small monasteries built into the cliffs between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. There is no road through — once you are past the dam the only ways on are a footpath cut into the rock face or a boat.
- Matka Lake · The dam was finished in 1938, which makes this the oldest artificial lake in the country, and it was built to run a hydroelectric station that is still working. The water is held between cliff walls a few hundred metres apart, so the lake is long and thin and looks like a river that forgot to move.
- Vrelo Cave · A cave at the water line reached only by boat, with an underwater shaft going down from it that divers have explored past two hundred and forty metres without finding the bottom — which would make it among the deepest underwater caves on earth. Expeditions are still going down it.
Getting to Skopje and getting around
- Skopje Airport · 20 kilometres east, the Vardar Express bus is 199 denars
- Railway Station · The 1981 concrete station, and the platforms are on the first floor
- Bus Station · Underneath the trains, and buses to Pristina, Sofia and Thessaloniki
- Macedonia Square · Everything starts here, and the big statue is in the middle of it
Cheap eats in Skopje
Eight counters where Skopje eats standing. The national dish is tavče gravče — white beans baked in a shallow clay pan with paprika and onion until the top crusts, served in the pan it was cooked in, and about two hundred denars. The street food is kebapi, small grilled rolls of minced meat ordered in tens, and the thing to take home is ajvar, roasted red pepper relish that families still make by the sackful in September. This is one of the cheapest capitals in Europe.
- Bit Pazar · Open 7 to 4, cash only, and quietest before nine
- Old Bazaar kebapi · Most shut by six, and all of them on Sunday
- Zelen Pazar · The produce market on the south bank, open till two, and cheaper
- Skopski Merak · About 600 denars a head, and book at the weekend
- Pelister · On Macedonia Square, the terrace is the view, and about 500 denars
- Turist · Out of the centre, grilled meat, and where families go on Sunday
- Debar Maalo · Four streets of grill restaurants, and all of them are good
- Kapan An courtyard · Tables in a fifteenth-century caravanserai, and the tea is Turkish
Museums in Skopje
- Museum of the City of Skopje · Free, closed Mondays, and the ruin outside is the exhibit
- Museum of Contemporary Art · 100 denars, up the hill behind the fortress, and quiet
- Archaeological Museum · 300 denars, in a 2014 palace, and the Stobi mosaics are the strength
- Holocaust Memorial Centre · 100 denars, closed Mondays, and an hour is what it takes
- Memorial House of Mother Teresa · Free, on the site of the church where she was baptised in 1910
- Daut Pasha Hamam · 100 denars, a 1490s bathhouse of thirteen domes, and it is the gallery
- Museum of the Macedonian Struggle · 300 denars, guided only, and the wax tableaux are the method
- Church of the Ascension · Free, inside the fortress walls, and shoulders covered
Nature and day trips near Skopje
A mountain on one side of the city and a river canyon on the other, both reachable in under an hour from the main square. The air in the valley is bad in winter — Skopje regularly records some of the worst readings in Europe — which is another reason the locals go up Vodno.
- Matka Canyon · Free, 15 kilometres west, and bus 60 goes there
- Vrelo Cave · 400 denars with the boat, and the shaft has no known bottom
- Mount Vodno · Free, 1,066 metres, and the walk up takes about two hours
- City Park · Free, and the river path runs right through it
- Skopje Aqueduct · Free, five kilometres north, and there is nothing else there
- Mavrovo National Park · 90 minutes west, the biggest park in the country, and skiing in winter
- Lake Ohrid · Three hours south, two to three million years old, and 288 metres deep
- Kuklica · Free, 120 eroded stone pillars, and the legend says they are wedding guests
Things to do in Skopje with kids
- Vodno cable car · 100 denars return, eight minutes, and closed on Mondays
- Matka boats · From 400 denars, 20 minutes each way, and life jackets provided
- Skopje Zoo · 150 denars, rebuilt in 2013, and inside the City Park
- Skopje Aquapark · From 500 denars, open June to September, and ten slides
- Porta Macedonia · Free, and there is a lift inside to a viewing floor on top
- Art Bridge · Free, twenty-nine bronze figures to count, and it lights up
- City Park · Free, playgrounds, pedal boats, and shade all the way through
- Kale Fortress · Free, real walls to walk along, and the whole city below
Nightlife in Skopje
Skopje goes out in two places and they do not mix: Debar Maalo, which is restaurants and terraces and where the eating turns into drinking around eleven, and the bars along the river and in the bazaar, which run later. Drinks are cheap even by Balkan standards — a beer is about a hundred and twenty denars, two euros.
- Debar Maalo · Nothing needs booking except at the weekend
- Skopski Merak · Live old-city songs from nine, and the room sings along
- Old Town Café · In the bazaar, open late, and no alcohol on that side
- Kapan An · The courtyard fills in the evening, and the tea is the order
- Macedonia Square · Free, the fountains light up, and the whole city walks it at nine
- Opera and Ballet · From 300 denars, in a 1979 Slovenian-designed building
- Macedonian National Theatre · From 300 denars, in a 2013 rebuild of the 1927 house
- Boris Trajkovski Arena · The big concerts and the handball, and it seats 6,000
Holy places in Skopje
The river divides the city by religion as much as by anything else — mosques and Ottoman stone on the north bank, Orthodox churches and nineteenth-century Europe on the south. Everything here is free or nearly free, and the mosques expect shoes off and shoulders covered.
- Sultan Murat Mosque · Free, shoes off, and closed at prayer times
- Mustafa Pasha Mosque · Free, from 1492, and the garden has the view over the bazaar
- Church of the Ascension · Free, three metres below ground, and the iconostasis is the thing
- Nerezi · Free, 20 minutes by taxi up the hill, and ring the bell
- Holocaust Memorial Centre · 100 denars, on the edge of the old Jewish quarter
- Memorial House of Mother Teresa · Free, and the baptism register from 1910 is on display
- St John at Kaneo · 100 denars, on a cliff over Lake Ohrid, and from the 13th century
- Painted Mosque, Tetovo · Free, 45 minutes west, and shoes off at the door
Frequently asked questions about Skopje
What is there to see in Skopje?
The top sights in Skopje are Stone Bridge, Old Bazaar and Kale Fortress. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Skopje?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Skopje without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Skopje?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Skopje, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The bazaar that outlived everything.
How do you get to Skopje and get around?
The main ways are Skopje Airport, Railway Station and Bus Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Skopje, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Skopje that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Skopje for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.