Travel Guide Struga

An old town renowned for its poets, Struga is marked by the presence of the Black Drin, a large river that forms the Drin in Albania and flows into the Adriatic Sea. Enjoy the calm of its streets and its long sandy beach on the shores of Lake Ohrid. Follow the promenade along the black Drin to the Poetry Bridge. This is where the river is born from the outflow of water from the lake. It is also on this bridge that the Struga Poetry Evenings are inaugurated at the end of August with the recital of the famous poem T'ga za Jug ("Nostalgia for the South"), composed in 1861 by local boy Konstantin Miladinov. Sponsored by UNESCO, the festival began in 1962. It has welcomed thousands of poets, including prizewinners Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg and Léopold Sédar Senghor. Yet Struga has far fewer attractions than its neighbor Ohrid.