Monastery of St. Naum
The Monastery of St. Naum is located in the southernmost part of Ohrid Lake, in the immediate vicinity of the Macedonian -Albanian border. The construction of this monastery is associated with the name of St. Naum, who was the closest helper of St. Clement of Ohrid. Information about the life and work of St. Naum can be obtained from three hagiographies. The Ohrid Archbishop Constantine Cavassila, wrote a Word about him. The Historic Archives in Ohrid house Chronicle Annals by a certain priest dating back to the second half of XIX century. These Chronicle Annals reveal interesting information pertaining to the construction of the monastery, its estates as well as concerning the lives of the abbots. They further provide information about the disastrous fire that broke out during the night between February 2nd and 3rd 1875, when most of the monastery compound burnt to ashes.
Ohrid is a city which has been “alive and vibrant” for seven thousand five hundred years in the vault of the European prehistory and history, out of which two thousand four hundred years as an urban capital on the shores of the magnificent Ohrid Lake. This lake, along with Lake Baikal in Caucasus and Lake Tanganyika in Equatorial Africa, is regarded as one of the oldest lakes in the world. In addition to the endemic fauna, this aquatic system is abundant in exceptionally valuable archeological findings which lie scattered on the bottom of the lake and have been preserved from the ancient prehistoric periods: relicts and remains from pile dwelling (palaphitte) settlements from the Copper Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age on the sites Usta na Drim and Vrbnik in Struga and the immediate vicinity of Struga, the Bay of the Bones and the Bay of the Bombs (in the proximity of the village of Peshtani) and the Bay of the Billy Goat (in the proximity of the village of Trpejca) on the eastern shoreline of Ohrid Lake.
