Skopje

Skopje lies on the Vardar, in a broad valley at the heart of the Balkans. Above the river rises the fortress, while the stone bridge joins the city to the old bazaar, with its mosques, baths and caravanserais. The Roman city of Scupi stood a few miles away; after its destruction by an earthquake in 518, settlement moved towards the defensible height that overlooks the valley.

Under Serbian rule Skopje became an important royal centre, and Stefan Dušan was crowned emperor there in 1346. The Ottomans took the city in 1392 and made it a flourishing centre of Rumelia. Sultan Mehmed II sponsored the stone bridge in the fifteenth century, and the Mustafa Pasha Mosque was built in 1492. By the middle of the seventeenth century Skopje was a large and prosperous city, although a severe earthquake had struck it in 1555. During the Habsburg campaign of 1689, General Piccolomini occupied Skopje and set it on fire. The destruction and subsequent epidemics drove many inhabitants away. Though public buildings were restored, the city remained diminished for much of the following century.