Bitola

Bitola is the second largest city in Macedonia and is located in the southern part of the Pelagonia Valley. The city is dispersed along the banks of the Dragor river at an altitude of 2,019 ft (615 m) above sea level under Baba Mountain. Spreading on an area of 1,798 sq. km. and with a population of 122,173 (1991), Bitola is an important industrial, agricultural, commercial, educational, and cultural center.

Bitola is an important junction that connects the South of the Adriatic Sea with the Aegean Sea and Central Europe, and is located only few miles from the Greek frontier border.

Baba Mountain overlooks Bitola from the east. Its magnificent Mount Pelister (2601 m) is a national park with exquisite flora and fauna, and a well-known ski resort.

The second Macedonian university is located here. Bitola has one of the oldest and most prestigious theaters in the country.

Traditionally a strong trading center, Bitola is also known as the city of the consuls. At one time during the Ottoman rule, Bitola had consulates from twelve countries. During the same period, there were a number of prestigious schools in the city including a military academy that, among others, was attended by the famous Turkish reformer Kemal Ataturk. During the Ottoman rule there were 60 mosques in the city, of which 12 remain today. Bitola was also the headquarters of many cultural organizations that were established at that time.

The orthodox church St. Dimitrija	The Bitola Catholic Church on Shirok Sokak

Bitola also had great buildings representative of the Ottoman period. These include the Bezisten (covered Turkish mall), the Isac Mosque, built over 1508-1509; the Yeni Mosque, built in 1559; and the Mosque of Yahdar-Kadi, built in 1562 by Kodja Sinan, the most prominent Ottoman architect of the time.

Another cultural and historical monument in Bitola is the Orthodox church "St. Dimitrija,". The church was built in 1830 with voluntary contributions of the local merchants and craftsmen. Since in the Ottoman Empire the churches were supposed look plain on the outside, the church is lavishly decorated on the inside, in order to make up for the lack of splendor on the outside. The opening scenes of the film "The Peacemaker" were shot in the "St. Dimitrija" church in Bitola.

A public fountain	An old family house in Bitola

Together with Salonika, Bitola was the center of the Macedonian revolutionary activities. In 1893 a group of Macedonian intellectuals, led by Dame Gruev, formed the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (MRO). The Bitola Revolutionary Group was the bastion of the Macedonian National Liberation Movement, and ten years later, it became a torch of the famous Ilinden Uprising.

However, the consequences of the Ilinden Uprising, the Balkan Wars, the World War I, and especially the newly established borders, staunched the natural connections with the Balkan centers. World War II brought a further decline in economic activity and in population; furthermore, its thriving Jewish community and traces of Jewish life were wiped out by the Nazis. Bitola has had its revival after the World War II liberation from the Nazi occupation forces on November 4, 1944.

Bicyclists from Prilep and Bitola	Putting street lights

In 1905, the Manaki brothers opened their Studio of Art Photography. In 1906, they took part in the Big World Exibition in Sinaia, Romania, where they won a gold medal for their photographic collection and later received the title of court photographers to Carol I of Romania. By 1907 the brothers brought back from London the 300th Biscope cine-camera, which marked the birth of film-making in Macedonia only 12 years after the invention of film-making by the Lumiere brothers. The Manakis also took pictures of numerous events and personalities in Macedonia, such as the Macedonian revolutionaries, the Young Turks's Revolution, the foreign diplomats in Bitola, kings, state leaders and Prime Ministers, war commanders. Especially impressive are the photos from the Balkan Wars and from the First World War, movements of troops, rusty guns, corps on the road, raised heads, lowered heads, officers in their new uniforms, soldiers in rags, German and Bulgarian boots on the Bitola cobblestones, the entrance of the Macedonian Liberation Brigade in Bitola in 1944.

Milton Manaki with his camera	The Manaki cinema in Bitola

In honor of the brothers Manaki, the oldest festival of cinematography in the world, the Manaki Brothers International Film Camera Festival takes place in Bitola

At the western edge of the modern city borders the ancient one. It was situated on a low hill at the juncture of two ancient routes, one leading from the Adriatic coast through Lychnidos (Ohrid) to Thrace, and a second extending north-east through Pelagonija to Stobi in the Vardar valley. The former route became the Via Egnatia after 148 B.C. This location on important highways made Heraklea strategically important, and it became the principal town and administrative center of the district of Lynkestis, a fertile plain surrounded by wooded mountains.

Floor mosaics in Heraklea

Heraklea figured in the campaigns of Julius Caesar during the civil wars as a supply depot, and inscriptions of veterans who settled there date as early as the turn of the era. Although the town is seldom mentioned in ancient literature its importance during the Early Empire is attested by numerous private and official inscriptions.

Episcopal residence, Heraklea	Public thermae, Heraklea

The names of bishops from Heraklea are known from the 4th, 5th, and 6th century. The town was sacked by Theodoric in 472 and, despite a large gift to him from the bishop of the city, again in 479. Heraklea was restored in the late 5th and early 6th century; it was taken over by the Slavs in the late 6th century.

Floor mosaic in Heraklea

Excavations have revealed several sections of the fortification wall on the acropolis and two basilicas in the main part of the settlement below to the south. Both basilicas had well-preserved mosaics of the 5th to 6th century B.C., depicting geometric and figured motives. Test trenches, dug in the vicinity of the basilicas, revealed streets and parts of buildings of the 4th-5th century.

Part of the ancient theater on the slopes of the acropolis has been excavated, but work has been concentrated in the larger of the two basilicas found earlier.

Ten miles north of Bitola is the great circular necropolis of Vissovi, comparable to the ancient centre of Mycenae, in Crete.

Aereal view of the Heraklea Lynkestis amphitheater

Mosaics were found in numerous buildings near the large basilica but the most interesting of the new mosaics, remarkable for its size and arrangement, was found in the narthex of the large basilica. It is a rectangle (over 21 by 4.7 m) with a broad rectangular border containing 36 octagonal panels in which fish, water birds, and mythological figures are depicted; the panels are linked by intricate meanders. The mosaic dates to the late 5th-early 6th century.