Travel Guide Prilep

An industrial city in crisis, Prilep boasts beautiful scenery, with the Marko Towers dominating the vast Pelagonian plain. The country's fourth most populous city is also home to a number of medieval churches. These bear witness to the strong presence of the Serbs and Byzantines, who fought over the region. With the Ottomans, then socialist Yugoslavia, Prilep turned to industry. Some of Europe's finest granite is quarried here, and tobacco growing was for a long time the "lifeblood" of the local economy. Today, however, Prilep tobacco is considered too strong. It sells poorly and unemployment is at record levels. What remains is Prilepska Pivarnica, the country's second-largest beer producer. The town is also associated with the memory of the partisans: on October 11, 1941, the attack on the Bulgarian police station in Prilep marked the beginning of the resistance in North Macedonia. This date gives rise to the second national holiday, after that of August 2, commemorating the 1903 Ilinden uprising in Kruševo.