Ohrid
Ohrid (ancient Lychnidos, medieval Achris) is a city in southwestern Macedonia, located along the Via Egnatia on the northeastern shore of Ohrid lake. It was an archbishopric and later capital of Bulgaria under Samuel of Bulgaria.
Archbishop Theophylaktos of Ohrid (died 1108) wrote that around 900 the city was a center of the building activity of St. Kliment of Ohrid, but no independent source verifies this late evidence. The city is first mentioned in 11- century sources: a Byzantine historian wrote that the palace of the Bulgarian basileis was erected there. Ohrid was probably the capital of the empire of Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria and of the Bulgarian patriarchate. In 1019/20 Basil II occupied it and made it one of four kastra (together with Prespa, Mokros, and Kitzabis) of the autocephalous Bulgarian archbishopric - but the name "metropolis of Achris" emerges only in a late notitia. The 12th-century author Anna Komnene considered the name Ohrid as a barbarous term for the ancient lake of Lychnidos; neither she, however, nor Michael of Devol, in his supplement to Skylitzes, who mention both the lake and the city of Lychnidos, equate Ohrid with the city of Lychnidos, which was a bishopric in the 4th-5th century, replaced in the 6th century by Justiniana Prima. In the 13th century Ohrid was contested between Bulgaria and Epiros; returned to Byzantine control, it was then conveyed to Stefan Uroš IV Dušan by the treaty of Aug. 1334 and fell to the Turks in 1394. The letters of the city's two most prominent archbishops, Theophylaktos and Demetrios Chomatenos, reflect the changing situation of the church in Ohrid: in the 11th century the archbishop tried in vain to secure imperial support against the local officials; in the 13th century his successor defended the privileges of the archbishopric against the patriarchate in Nicaea.
Church of St. John the Theologian at Kaneo
Fortress of Tsar Samuel
Walls of Ohrid
Church of Saints Clement and Panteleimon at Plaošnik
Late Antique Baptistery at Plaošnik
Ruins of Late Antique Basilica
Church of the Virgin Bolnički
Church of St. Nicholas Bolnički
Church of the Virgin Čelnica
Church of Sts. Constantine and Helena
Church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian
Church of Ss. Constantine and Helena
Ancient Theater of Ohrid
Monastery of St. Naum
Drawing from Edward Lear (1851)
Sources
Architecture in the Balkans from Diocletian to Süleyman the Magnificent by Slobodan Ćurčić
Byzantine Architecture by Cyril Mango
Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture by Richard Krautheimer
Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium edited by Alexander Kazhdan
Resources
Ohrid Album (Byzantine Legacy Flickr)
St. Sophia Ohrid Album (Byzantine Legacy Flickr)
Plaošnik Plaošnik Ohrid Album (Byzantine Legacy Flickr)
Monastery of St. Naum Album (Byzantine Legacy Flickr)
Institute for protection of monuments of culture and museum Ohrid Macedonia