Travel Guide Kriva Palanka

Renowned for its beautiful Osogovo monastery, Kriva Palanka lies in a wide valley at 620 m altitude. In the surrounding area, you'll find a number of unusual accommodations: a ranch, a tree house, a hotel in the large monastery... Enough to enjoy the superb landscapes of the Osogovo and the hiking trails leading to the massif's summit, Mount Ruen, located along the Bulgarian border, 16 km to the south-east as the crow flies. As for Kriva Palanka itself, this former mining town won't charm you with its architecture: a few buildings from the socialist period, a large road and relatively modern houses spread over the hills bordering the Kriva. This is the most recent of the towns in Northern Macedonia. It was founded in 1633 as a palanka, a Turkish term for an Ottoman wooden fortification designed to defend and accommodate merchant caravans. The word was adopted in South Slavic languages to describe a "small town" or "burg". Welcome, then, to the "village on the Kriva [river]".