051 MACEDONIA - Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Ohrid region (WHS)

Ohrid is a city in the Republic of Macedonia and the seat of the Ohrid Municipality. It is the largest city on the Lake Ohrid and the eighth-largest city in the country with over 42 000 inhabitants. Ohrid is notable for once having had 365 churches, one for each day of the year and has been referred to as a "Jerusalem of the Balkans". The city is rich in picturesque houses and monuments, and tourism is predominant. The earliest inhabitants of the widest Lake Ohrid region were the Dassaretae, an ancient Greek tribe and the Enchelei, an Illyrian tribe. According to the recent excavations by Macedonian archaeologists it was a town way back at the time of king Phillip II of Macedon. The South Slaves began to arrive in the area during the 6th century AD. By the early 7th century it was colonized by a Slavic tribe known as the Berziti. The Bulgars conquered the city in 867. Between 990 and 1015, Ohrid was the capital and stronghold of the Bulgarian Empire. After the Byzantine reconquest of the city in 1018 by Basil II, the Bulgarian Patriarchate was downgraded to an Archbishopric and placed under the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Lake Ohrid, straddles the mountainous border between southwestern Macedonia and eastern Albania. It is one of Europe's deepest and oldest lakes, preserving a unique quatic ecosystem that is of worldwide importance with more than 200 endemic species. Lake Ohrid belongs to a group of Dessaret basins that originated from geotectonic depression during the Pliocene epoch up to five million years ago on the western side of the Dinaric Alps. Worldwide, there are only a few lakes with similarly remote origins. The water at the surface of Lake Ohrid moves predominantly in a counter-clockwise direction along the shore, as a result of wind forcing and earth rotation. However in an average winter only the top 150-200 meters of the lake are mixed, whereas the water below is stably stratified by salinity.

About the sender

Stefani Tabakovska (direct swap) sent from Skopje (Macedonia) on 07.10.2013