Constructing Nationalism Through the Cityscape: The Skopje 2014 Project

Wesley J. Reisser, Ph.D
Department of Geography, The George Washington University
DOI: 10.21690/foge/2018.61.1p

In 1991, the city of Skopje emerged from being a secondary city within Yugoslavia to being capital of the newly independent Republic of Macedonia. Unlike neighboring Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, or Greece, Macedonia had never existed as an independent state in the modern era. The last country of that name was the kingdom ruled by Alexander the Great in the 300s BCE. After its establishment, Macedonia’s independence, and very name came under fire. Greece refuses to recognize the country by its name (as a result, at the UN, it is known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), as it also has a province called Macedonia just to the south of the republic, and it claims Macedonia’s most famous king, Alexander the Great, as one of its own. Bulgaria, despite having recognized the country, also has longstanding historical ties and claims to much of the republic.
As a Slavic-speaking country (they speak their own language: Macedonian) trying to differentiate itself from Greece and Bulgaria, the modern Macedonian state has turned to the city plan to promote a narrative of what Macedonia is and where it comes from. The city and national government launched an ambitious project, Skopje 2014, as a means to rebuild the city in an image that conveys the state’s view of Macedonian nationality and history that will inform and persuade the Macedonian people and those outside its borders. Geographic literature has looked extensively at the use of monuments, names, and the built environment as means to commemorate and reinforce identities. Few places present the use of these three tools quite as starkly as Skopje, where the urban fabric has become a canvas upon which the Macedonian government portrays what it believes Macedonia is and always has been.

Skopje’s history dates back to the Roman era and earlier. The Stone Bridge across the Vardar River was originally built by the Romans, and the current structure dates to the Ottoman Empire. The bridge serves as the symbol of the city and a reminder that human settlement at the site goes back to ancient times.

During the Middle Ages, Macedonia became a center for Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which today serves as one of the primary distinctions, along with language, between Macedonia’s Slavic/Christian majority and its Albanian/Muslim minority. Skopje even served as the capital of Bulgaria during parts of the Middle Ages, and Orthodox churches dot the city.

Skopje has many reminders in its urban landscape of the history of various outsiders that ruled the city, none more so than the symbols of Ottoman Turkish domination over Macedonia, such as the winding streets of the Old Bazaar (or Turkish Bazaar) and the Mustafa Pasha Mosque, whose minaret dominates the cityscape above the bazaar.

The final outsiders to rule over Skopje came with Macedonia’s integration into communist Yugoslavia. In 1963, much of the city was destroyed in a major earthquake, allowing the communists to rebuild the city with brutalist concrete architecture. While many of those remain, monuments of the Yugoslav era are mostly gone or overgrown.

In 2010, the government of Macedonia announced a massive program, Skopje 2014, to add new buildings and monuments in the “classical” style throughout the city. An enormous building campaign commenced, estimated to cost over $700 million despite Macedonia being the poorest of the Yugoslav successor states.

Central to the effort was an architectural and monumental program that would place Macedonia as the successor state to the ancient empire of Alexander the Great. A massive statue of Alexander on horseback was erected in Macedonia Square, the focal point of the city, where neoclassical facades were also tacked onto the exteriors of existing buildings (as the scaffolding in the background shows).

The Alexander monument, officially called the Warrior on a Horse, includes statues of various ancient Macedonian foot soldiers around the fountain base, lions which were the symbol of Alexander the Great, and a water and light show set to classical music that plays each night. The show has become a popular attraction for locals and visitors alike, presenting Macedonia as the heir to one of the great empires of ancient history.

Directly across the stone bridge stands another massive monument, the Warrior Monument, likely of Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. This monument further establishes the Republic of Macedonia’s claim to be the heir of Alexander’s empire.

Along with statues of antiquity, the Skopje 2014 project has built Greco-Roman style monuments, such as the Porta Macedonia arch and the Fallen Heroes of Macedonia monument, both in the Roman-triumphal style. Modern Macedonia hasn’t fought a single war for the arch to commemorate, but it does recall the city’s Roman past.

The monumental cityscape also includes hybrid structures such as bridges over the Vardar River that have numerous statues of historical figures that demonstrate a history of Macedonia from the Alexandrian period to the present. Local passersby told the author that they had no idea who most of the figures were.

At the very center of the Skopje 2014 project stands the National Museum of Archeology, which also houses the Constitutional Court. The building contains artifacts of the Greco-Roman eras in Macedonia, while attempting to adopt a neoclassical façade, although one that may remind people more of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas than actual Roman architecture.

In an effort to tell Macedonia’s Christian past, monuments of famous Christians of Macedonia have also been erected. Justinian I, an important Byzantine Emperor from the 500s AD, was born in Tauresium, just outside Skopje. Saints Cyril and Methodius are believed to have invented the Cyrillic script used to write Macedonian, Russian, and other Slavic languages, while in Macedonia. No similar monuments have been erected for any famous Muslims who have left a mark on the region’s history.

The Memorial House of Mother Theresa stands at the site of the church where she was baptized, after being born in Skopje. Nobel laureate Mother Theresa is probably the most famous Macedonian of the twentieth century, but is more widely associated with her adopted home of Calcutta, India, than with Macedonia. Even so, she is widely publicized in the city as another in a long line of Christian leaders from Macedonia, despite her being Catholic rather than Orthodox

Despite most Skopje 2014 buildings being in a classical style, the Holocaust Memorial Museum of Macedonia is a modernist structure that stands near the heart of the Skopje 2014 projects. The memorial is where the old Jewish Quarter existed prior to World War II. Next to it is the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, which tells the story of the Macedonian people throughout history.

While most of the new urban landscape of Skopje celebrates ties to ancient times or modern struggles, there are also monuments that promote Macedonian folk culture. Macedonia is famous for its unique music, costume, and dance styles that are some of the best preserved in the Balkans. Statues of dancers adorn some city streets, and the newly built Ministry of Foreign Affairs building has statues of the various regional costumes of Macedonia surrounding the building along higher floors. Despite only a few reminders in the landscape, folk culture is broadly reproduced in television and radio programs in Macedonia

The Skopje 2014 project shows a concerted attempt by the Macedonian government to define what is, and what is not Macedonia, through the remaking of the public architectural landscape of the capital city. Despite this, it is not quite clear what legacy or history they are trying to tell. The monumental landscape constructed in Skopje tries to define Macedonia as the heir to the ancient kingdom of the same name, but also as a bastion of Christianity, despite the long Ottoman history in the region and the large Albanian (mostly Muslim) population living in Macedonia. The narrative the project has constructed in effect places a veneer of a certain preferred identity onto an old multiethnic and multireligious city, that says some residents, namely Orthodox Christians who speak Macedonian, are the real Macedonians and inheritors of the legacy of Alexander the Great, while downplaying or ignoring the history of many others who live(d) in the city. Through statues, buildings, and the names on them, the Macedonian government is trying to build their version of a national identity by altering the urban landscape.