Travel Guide Gradsko

This somewhat gloomy town is nevertheless a choice stopover for the millions of Balkan tourists who flock to the Greek beaches every summer via the E-75 freeway. Here you'll find garages, restaurants and, above all, a large wine production (over 10 million liters per year) and the country's most important archaeological site: Stobi. The latter contains the remains of a city founded by the Peonians, then occupied by the Macedonians, Romans and Byzantines until the early 6th century. The present-day town grew with the construction of the Thessalonica-Skopje railroad line between 1871 and 1873. An important communications hub at the crossroads of the Vardar and Cerna Reka river valleys (from Kavadarci), Gradsko once again occupied a key strategic position during the First World War. The French Army of the East first seized it in October 1915 in an attempt to rescue Serbian forces, then in September 1918, during the lightning offensive towards Skopje and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.