Things to see and do Polog And Reka

This abandoned Orthodox church (Црква Свети Никола Летен/Crkva Sveti Nikola Leten) is an Instagrammer's delight: it's partly submerged in Lake Mavrovo. Built in 1850, it's the only visible building of the former village of Mavrovo, buried between 1947 and 1956. However, depending on water levels, it is possible to visit the church, of which only the bell tower is still in good condition. The present-day village of Mavrovo has a new St. Nicholas church, built in 2006.

This small pedestrian square (Градски Плоштад/Gradski Ploštad, Sheshi i Qytetit) forms the center of Gostivar with numerous shops, cafés and restaurants in the surrounding area. It is dominated by the white bell tower of the main Orthodox church, Mother of God, built between 1924 and 1929. Opposite begins JNA ("Yugoslav People's Army") Street, which leads to the A 2 road. To the north of the square is a shopping center and, to the south, the small City Park.

As the Šar Mountains National Park is new, it does not yet have a proper information center. For excursions in the national park, more information can be found on the websites of the hiking trail networks Via Dinarica (trail.viadinarica.com), which covers the entire Dinaric Alps from Slovenia, and High Scardus Trail (highscardus.com), which specializes in routes through the Šar Mountains, between Kosovo and Northern Macedonia.

This square (Плоштад Скендербег/Ploštad Skenderbeg, Sheshi Skënderbeu) consists mainly of two small parks in the city center. Since 2003, it has been adorned by a massive 3.5 m-high statue of Gjergj Kastrioti, known as Skanderbeg (1405-1468), financed by the Albanian diaspora in the USA. The Albanian hero's family ruled Debar before the city was taken by the Ottomans in 1395. Also on the square is a small monument commemorating the Albanian victims of the Kosovo war (1998-1999).

This small stone Orthodox church (Црква Света Петка/Crkva Sveta Petka) is one of the oldest in the Reka region. It dates from the ^16th century, but no longer features any valuable decoration. It is dedicated to Saint Paraskeva of the Balkans, an ^11th-century Eastern ascetic who took the place locally of Petka, the ancient deity of the South Slavs. Galičnik also boasts the parish church of Saints Peter and Paul (1931) and the chapel of Saint Petka, on the outskirts of the hamlet.

This small, single-nave Orthodox church (Црква Света Варвара/Crkva Sveta Varvara, Kisha e Shën Varvarës) was founded in 1597 by the St. John-Bigorvski monastery. The exterior walls are in poor condition, but the church features superb ^16th- and ^17th-century frescoes. The church stands a little way from the hamlet of Sredno Maalo/Средно Маало ("Middle Village"), part of the municipality of Rajčica/Рајчица (160 inhabitants), or Rajçicë/Rajçica in Albanian.

This Orthodox church (Црква Успение на Пресвета Богородица/Crkva Uspenie na Presveta Bogorodica) is a three-nave basilica completed in 1860. The greatest Mijak artists of the ^19th century worked here. The frescoes were painted by Dičo Zograf (1819-1872), a native of Tresonče. The carved wooden iconostasis was designed by Petar Filipovski (1780-1854) and made by his two brothers Marko and Jovan Filipovski. But twelve of the icons were stolen in 2011.

Opened in 1991, this private museum (Музеј Џепчиште/Džepčište Muzej, Muzeu i Xhepçishtit) bills itself as "the smallest ethnological museum in the world". Its owner, retired architect and collector Simeon Zlatev, known as Mone, exhibits around 1,150 objects from the ^8th to the ^20th century in a 7.2^m2 room: his mother's wedding dress, weapons, tools, traditional costumes, coins and more. There's only enough room for one visitor at a time. A 9^m2 room serves as a storeroom.

This tower (Саат-Кула/Saat-Kula, Sahat Kulla) stands some 25 m high with a square base, octagonal shaft and wooden top. Built in 1728/1729, it is one of the country's best-preserved towers, used to indicate prayer times to Muslim inhabitants. Next door is the large Ebu-Bekir-Pacha Mosque, also known as the "Clock Mosque", founded in 1676 and rebuilt in 1944, with a minaret 35 m high dating from 1994.

This ^16th-century Ottoman bridge (Еленски Скок Мост/Elenski Skok Most, or Elen Skok Köprüsü in Turkish) owes its name "deer jump" to a legend according to which a deer hunted in Mogorče managed to cross the Mala Reka here, before being cured by the inhabitants of Galičnik. The superb stone arch supports a 23 m-long deck. The structure is said to have been designed by Mimar Hajrudin (c. 1490-1570), the designer of the famous Old Bridge in Mostar (1566), Bosnia-Herzegovina. Today, it is used only by hikers and flocks of sheep.

This Orthodox monastery (Раички Манастир/Raički Manastir, Manastiri në Rajçicë) was founded in the ^14th century and completely rebuilt in the ^19th century. It is famous for providing some of the embroidery for the liturgical vestments worn by the Metropolitans (Orthodox bishops) of North Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Beautiful embroideries are sold in the store. Attached to the Macedonian Orthodox Church, this complex is a dependency of the St. John-Bigorvski monastery in Rostuša. It was renovated in 2001 with the support of the Holy Nativity Monastery in Boston, USA, which is part of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis (bishopric) of Boston. The Rajčica monastery is thus occupied by a small community of American and/or English-speaking nuns. It is dedicated to Saint George the Victorious (Sveti Ǵorǵi Pobedonosec). In fact, it houses the only replica of a precious ^10th-century icon "not made by human hands" depicting St. George slaying the dragon, kept at the Bulgarian monastery of Zographou on Mount Athos in Greece. The replica can be seen in the catholicon, the church of St. George. Dating from 1835, it is decorated with frescoes from 1875. It was built on the foundations of a ^16th-century chapel, itself built on the ruins of an ^11th-century castle. Next door, a building houses the nuns' cells, their sewing and embroidery workshops and a small chapel on the upper floor.

Perched 970 m above sea level, this Orthodox monastery (Кичевски Манастир/Kičevski Manastir) was founded in 1316 and rebuilt in the ^19th century. The monastic buildings form an enclosure around the main church dedicated to the "Pure Virgin" (Bogorodica Prečista). It features remarkable frescoes (1865) by the great Mijak painter Dičo Zograf and a beautiful wooden iconostasis (1864). The complex also houses the small Church of St. Nicholas and an area reserved for Muslims, who once came in large numbers because of miraculous cures attributed to the place.

This memorial (Спомен-Куќа на Али Риза Ефенди/Spomen-Kuḱa na Ali Riza Efendi, Ali Rıza Efendi Anı Evi) was built in 2014 on the supposed site of the family home of Ali Rıza Efendi (1839-1888), the father of Mustafa Kemal, known as Atatürk (c. 1881-1938), who founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923. The site therefore has a certain historical importance for the authorities in Ankara. The Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA) financed the work and organized the museography. The small complex comprises two beautiful corbelled houses: an annex and the main dwelling. Both are in the traditional Ottoman style of the region, made of stone and wood... but also with a lot of concrete and modern materials. Five rooms retrace the lives of Atatürk's grandparents, using mannequins, rare period objects and lots of copies of photos, documents, costumes and so on. It's all very kitsch, and accompanied by panels with explanations in English.

The Atatürk myth. According to the official Turkish theory, the original house was destroyed after the departure of the Ottomans in 1912. It would have belonged to Ali Riza Efendi's parents, Kızıl Hafız Ahmet Efendi and Ayşe Hanım. Originally from Karaman, in present-day Turkey, they later moved to Thessalonica, today in Greek Macedonia, in the 1830s. It was in this city that Ali Riza Efendi was born in 1839. While one room shows little Ali playing with his sister, there is no evidence that he ever came to Kodžadžik/Kocacık. He spent his life in Thessalonica. He married Zübeyde Hanım (1856-1923), with whom he had five children, including Mustafa Kemal, and died there at the age of 41, having worked as a customs officer and gone bankrupt in the timber trade. None of this is well explained here. Turkish historians also claim that the site chosen for the reconstruction of the house is the wrong one. This is hardly surprising, given that the Turkish authorities have altered the details of Atatürk's biography in order to build up their myth. In Thessaloniki, for example, the house of Ali Riza Efendi, known as "Atatürk's birthplace", is very popular with Turkish tourists. But this large villa (which also houses a Turkish consulate) is itself a reconstruction. The "Father of the Turks" was not born here, but in another part of the city. The exact date of Atatürk's birth is not known either.

This artificial lake (Мавровско Езеро/Mavrovsko Ezero) covers 13.7 ^km2, 10 km in length from north to south and 3 km in maximum width. The main tourist attraction of the Mavrovo National Park, it is the country's second-largest man-made lake after Tikveš. It takes its name from the former village of Mavrovo, buried in the southern part of the lake, where the partly submerged Church of St. Nicholas remains. The lake is fed mainly by the Radika, a 70 km-long river that rises in Kosovo and joins the Black Drin south of Debar. It was created in several stages. An earth dam was first built in the ^19th century, to the south, near Mavrovo. The structure was enlarged in 1947, before another 54 m-high concrete dam was built in 1956-1957 to the east, on the Mavrovska River, a tributary of the Radika. It was during construction of this dam that 52 workers were killed by an avalanche in 1956. A beautiful monument pays tribute to them near the dam. The dam operates three hydroelectric power stations with a capacity of 390 million kilowatt-hours. The riverbanks are served by two roads and attract many tourists: swimmers, yachtsmen, fishermen and skiers. The Zare-Lazareski ski resort is located at the southern tip of the lake, near the rebuilt village of Mavrovo (population 200). Finally, on the eastern shore, near the hamlet of Leunovo (pop. 30), stands the large Hotel Radika with its own ski resort.