Cemeteries and memorials to visit Northern Macedonia

Located on the edge of Stara Čaršija, beneath the Skopje fortress, this Orthodox church (Црква Свети Спас/Crkva Sveti Spas, Kisha e Shën Sotirit) and its complex house one of the country's finest iconostases, as well as the tomb of Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary Goce Delčev (1872-1903). Dating from the late ^17th or early ^18th century, it is dedicated to the Ascension of Christ and Christ the Saviour: the term Spas refers both to the Ascension of Christ (forty days after Easter) and to Jesus himself. The proximity of the Mustafa-Pacha mosque explains the discreet architecture of the complex. Viewed from the outside, the church reveals only its tiled roof and black-beamed campanile. Once in the courtyard, we discover the sarcophagus in which lies Goce Delčev, considered a hero in North Macedonia and Bulgaria. It was offered by Bulgaria to Yugoslavia in 1946 under pressure from Moscow, shortly before Tito's break with Stalin in 1948. The church is reached by descending a few steps.

Iconostasis. The church's iconostasis is carved entirely from walnut. It is 10 m wide and almost 7 m high. It was made between 1817 and 1824 by brothers Marko and Petar Filipovski and Makarie Frčkovski, a trio who are also responsible for the iconostasis at St. John Bigorvski Monastery in Mavrovo National Park. All three belong to the Macedonian Mijak minority, renowned for their engraving and painting skills. Divided into five horizontal zones, the iconostasis has only two registers of icons, also made by Mijak craftsmen, the largest of which were added in 1864. But it's the woodwork that really stands out. The double twisted columns supporting the various elements are carved from a single block of wood. The panels, meanwhile, are teeming with finely carved details: plant motifs, a fortified city, animals, monsters, human figures and more. Note the group of three men representing the three craftsmen working the wood, tools in hand. Or the biblical scene of Herod's feast, in which Salome dances in traditional Mijak costume to charm the King of Judea into delivering her the head of St. John the Baptist. Finally, the ceiling features frescoes dating from the ^17th century, rediscovered during restoration work in 1964.

This cemetery (Француски Гробишта/Francuski Grobišta) houses the bodies of 13,262 soldiers of the French Army of the East who died in the First World War. Established in 1923, it is the most important French military cemetery of this conflict abroad. It also houses the "Bitola Memorial", a museum inaugurated by the French Minister of Veterans Affairs in 2018. Covering an area of 3 hectares, the site is impressive, with the graves of 6,134 identified soldiers and those of a further 128 unidentified soldiers divided into four squares, as well as an ossuary containing the remains of 7,000 mostly identified men. On the graves or in the memorial registers, the families of the "poilus d'Orient" come to look for the name of an ancestor buried in Bitola. There are Émile, Joseph and Fernand, but also Abdalla, Rabah and Mohammed. The list is long. It recalls the heavy price paid by colonial troops during the "Verdun of the Balkans": the siege of Monastir/Bitola by the German and Bulgarian armies from November 1916 to September 1918.

Memorial. Housed in a building next to the janitor's house, the memorial is small but well designed. In the first room, photographs by the Manaki brothers document the daily lives of civilians and soldiers in the bombed-out city. The second room details the lives of twelve French, Senegalese and Madagascan soldiers. The words are harsh. Like those written by soldier Joseph Toutain (1895-1980) to his family in Orne, on March 19, 1917: "I [received] a bullet in the neck, it came out behind the ear." Although the cemetery is open to the public, the memorial is often closed. To prepare your visit and make sure the janitor is present, it's best to make an appointment with the French consulate in Bitola. In the rest of the Balkans, there are five other large cemeteries or French military squares from the First World War: Seddülbahir (Turkey) with 12,235 bodies, Thessalonica (Greece) with 8,310 bodies, Skopje with 2,930 bodies, Sofia (Bulgaria) with 789 bodies and Korça (Albania) with 640 bodies. Lastly, other small isolated squares or foreign military cemeteries also house the remains of soldiers who died for France. Such is the case of the British military cemetery at Doïrani, near Lake Dojran on the border between Greece and Northern Macedonia, where an unknown French soldier lies buried.

This kitsch house (Спомен-Куќа Мајка Тереза/Spomen-Kukja Majka Tereza) was erected in 2009 as part of the "Skopje 2014" project. It is located on Macedonia Street, on the site of the Catholic church where Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, known as Mother Teresa (1910-1997), was baptized. Small, uninteresting exhibition upstairs and chapel on the first floor. The new Saints-Constantin-et-Hélène church and the reconstruction of a ^17th- or ^18th-century tower surround the building.

Built between 1976 and 1979, this beautiful white monument (Спомен Костурница/Spomen Kosturnica) houses the remains of 87 Veles partisans who died during World War II, including that of the poet Kočo Racin, who was killed under murky circumstances in 1943. Designed by Serbian sculptor Ljubomir Denković (b. 1936), the dome of the ossuary (10 m high and 15 m wide) evokes a German soldier's helmet from the ^Third Reich broken into four. Inside is the largest mosaic in the country (220^m2), the work of Macedonian painter Petar Mazev (1927-1993).

Opened in 2004, this monument (Меморијален Центар АСНОМ) is decorated with a colorful mosaic of 140^m2. It is dedicated to the Antifascist Assembly for the Liberation of the Macedonian People (ASNOM). This was founded on August 2, 1944, in the monastery of Prohor Pčinski, in Serbia, 9 km to the north, then dissolved by Tito in early 1945. Considered as independentists or probulgares, a hundred of militants were then executed. An important official ceremony is held here on August 2, the national holiday, on the anniversary of the Ilinden uprising in 1903.

This monument (Спомен Костурница/Spomen Kosturnica) has stood since 1957 on a small hill with a park and a soccer field below. Designed by Serbian sculptor Sreten Stojanović (1898-1960), it consists of a concrete obelisk about 20 m high, a bronze statue of a woman holding up an ear of corn, and a crypt housing the remains of some 300 partisans who died during World War II. The site offers views of the city center and the Banevo Trlo neighborhood, which is mostly populated by Albanians and Roma.

Located on top of a hill, 485 m above sea level, this monument (Спомен Костурница Зебрњак/Spomen Kosturnica Zebrnjak) has dominated the entire plain northeast of Kumanovo since 1937. It houses the (clearly visible) bones of about 400 Serbian soldiers who died during the Battle of Kumanovo on October 23-24, 1912. This decisive confrontation of the First Balkan War provoked a vast retreat of the Ottomans. The ossuary originally consisted of a stone tower 48.5 m high. This was knocked down by the Bulgarian army in 1942.

This 75 ha cemetery (Гробишта Бутел/Grobišta Butel) is the largest in the Skopje metropolitan area. Among the thousands of graves is that of Georgios Zorbas (1865-1941), famous for inspiring the writer Nikos Kazantzakis to write his short story Zorba the Greek in 1946. Embodied by Anthony Quinn dancing the sirtaki in the 1964 film of the same name, Georgios Zorbas was first a miner, then a monk in Greece, before becoming a mine owner in the Skopje region at the end of his life. Thus, the tomb of one of the great figures of Greek folklore is located here, south of the cemetery (GPS: 42.034575, 21.435675). Rediscovered in 1997, the grave is simple, white and bears the name of the Janda family (Јанда): it houses Georgios Zorbas (Георгиос Зорбас) but also his grandchildren Konstantinida and Jovan Janda, who died in the 1960s. In addition, the Butel cemetery has two important monuments. To the east stands the elegant Monument to the Victims of the 1963 Earthquake. Opened in 1973 and designed by Jordan Grabulovski, who designed the Makedonium in Kruševo, it hosts an official ceremony on July 26, the date of the earthquake that killed 1,070 people in Skopje in 1963. A little further south stands the large Partisan Monument (1964) designed by the Croatian architect Dimitrije Mita Mladenović (b. 1936). Two ceremonies are held here: on May 9 for the celebrations of the end of World War II and on March 11 in memory of the deportation of Macedonian Jews in 1943.

This World War I cemetery (Француски Воени Гробишта/Francuski Voeni Grobišta, Varrezat Ushtarake Franceze) is located above the Vardar and next to the US embassy. It houses the bodies of the soldiers of the French Army of the East who died during the Vardar offensive of September 1918. Although much smaller than Bitola, it contains 2,930 bodies of French, Moroccan and Senegalese soldiers: 960 individual graves and two ossuaries. Inaugurated in 1923, it stands on a former Roma cemetery ceded to France. Well-maintained, it comprises four rows of graves, monuments and the Maison du Souvenir (House of Remembrance). The House of Remembrance keeps a list of the soldiers buried here. An exhibition features period documents and recounts the capture of Skopje on September 29, 1918. This episode marked the end of the "Üsküb maneuver". While the Macedonian front had been at a standstill since 1915, this offensive, launched on September 14, 1918, broke through the lines held by the Bulgarians, Germans and Austro-Hungarians. Starting out from Florina (Greece), the^4th regiment of African chasseurs and the regiment of Moroccan spahis marched up the Vardar valley, giving rise to the last charge of the French cavalry under the command of General François Léon Jouinot-Gambetta, nephew of Léon Gambetta. The capture of Skopje led to Bulgaria's capitulation on September 30. Allied troops continued on to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which capitulated on November 4.

This cemetery (Еврејски Гробишта/Evrejski Grobišta) is marked by a large white Moorish-style portico built in the 1920s. It is the oldest Sephardic burial site in the Balkans. It houses around a thousand tombs, the oldest of which date back to 1497, five years after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Monastir/Bitola had up to 5,000 Sephardic inhabitants in the ^19th century. Almost the entire community (3,351 people) was massacred by the Germans in March 1943 at the Treblinka camp in Poland.

Left abandoned since independence, this monument (Цветот на Cлободата/Cvetot na Slobodata) nevertheless pays tribute to the fighters of Slavic Macedonia through the centuries. With a height of 12 m, only the metal frame remains today. Erected in 1969 near the archaeological site of Vardarski Rid, this modernist metal structure was moved here, at the top of the hill of Mrzenski (145 m of altitude), in 2005. In the shape of a stylized flower, it is the work of Jordan Grabuloski, who is also responsible for the superb Makedonium in Kruševo.

Created in 1961, this memorial (Могила на Непобедените/Mogila na Nepobedenite) houses eight enigmatic white sculpted stones evoking flowers or chess pieces. Set in the 7-hectare Revolution Park, it pays tribute to the 800 or so partisans from the region who died during the Second World War. The memorial is the work of the great Serbian designer and architect Bogdan Bogdanović (1922-2010), whose work includes the Flower Monument in the former Jasenovac concentration camp between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.