A beautiful city?




 

"Skopje is one of the least appreciated capitals in Europe."Misha Glenny BBC correspondent in the Balkans


The city of Skopje rests in the bottom of a bowl surrounded by mountains. After a snowstorm the other day and a series of true blue sky days, I can see what Misha Glenny was saying. It is certainly a beautiful setting, with the Vardar River slicing through the city and mountains all around.





It could be a truly beautiful city if an earthquake hadn't destroyed 80 percent of the buildings in in 1963. The quake leveled much of the old city, killing more than a thousand people and left 200,00 people homeless. Foreign aid poured into the country. President Kennedy sent materials to build pre-fab houses and tent villages (and a street nearby was named after him). 

During the reconstruction process following the quake, some of the finest architects of that time (under the supervision of the Japanese master Kenzō Tange) were hired to give Skopje a new, modern look. This is why Skopje is so full of  brutalist architecture. Think Boston City Hall - concrete village. I am not a fan of this style of architecture having worked in the brutalist Christian Science Monitor building where concrete columns blocked out most of the natural light. 

The university I will be teaching at is a good example.




The earthquake, coupled with Tito-era economic conditions means that most of the buildings are rather plain concrete blocks. But once in a while you see a renovated building that attempts to upset the monotony. 




And then there are a bunch of new government buildings built in the last decade that look more like the White House and Washington DC -- neoclassical in an attempt to recreate an "old" city like the other capitals of Europe??






But if North Macedonia gets into the EU and revs up its economic growth, I forecast that Skopje will be among the many places that I will say "shoulda bought property there when I first visited". 
{Prior examples: of bad foresight...Telluride in 1980 just before the ski resort was built, ...Martha's Vineyard before Jackie Kennedy  bought in 1979,  the North End in '86...on and on and on...ce la vie!)


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