Prilep

Above Prilep on the edge of the Pelagonian plain, walls and towers rise among huge rocky outcrops. The fortress known as Markovi Kuli, or Marko's Towers, guarded a medieval town that grew below it. In the 14th century Prilep became the seat of King Vukašin and his son Marko, whose name would live on in the songs and legends of the southern Slavs.

After Vukašin died fighting the Ottomans at the Maritsa in 1371, Marko ruled the lands around Prilep as an Ottoman vassal. He fell at the battle of Rovine in 1395, and the town passed into direct Ottoman rule. A new settlement grew beside the older Christian quarter of Varoš, and a large mosque was built in the 1470s. Over time Prilep developed as a market town serving the northern Pelagonian countryside.