Struga a place which two much debased words fit well: it is pretty and charming.
Struga is found on the shores of Lake Ohrid, around 14 km away from the
beautiful city of Ohrid, and lies at an altitude of 698m above sea level.
The city has been known since the time of the Iliri, and a lot of the old
writers of travel books (travelogue) have noted that Struga has been a
very alive city, with developed trade, big markets, and the houses of the
reach Struzan people have been always beautiful and decorative. That is
why since that time, there has been a saying "Kako Struga nema druga"
(Like Struga there is no other).
Panoramic view of the city;
Every Saturday there is a gathering for the weekly market
which should not be missed. One is marked in the centre of the town for
products of all kinds, while the other in the northern purlieus for livestock.
Oddly enough for the kind of provincial town it is, it
possesses a very good natural history museum in which the local fauna are
particularly well represented. It is created by a Russian refugee who personally
collected and mounted everything in it. If you have had any doubts about
the existence of bears and wolves in Macedonia, you will see some good
looking specimens here, together with herons, pelicans, scorpions, snakes
and many more.
Further, Struga is the capital of poetry each year since
1962, in the second half of August, the very popular Struga Poetry Evenings
have gathered poets from all the continents. The
Struga Poetry Festival is one of the oldest, largest and most renowned
of its kind in the world. It includes a spectacular poetic event, entitled
"Bridges", where poets read their work from the bridge under which the
river Crn Drim flows out of lake Ohrid. This usually happens before an
audience of some ten thousand people. The recipients of the Golden Wreath,
the highest accolade of the Struga Poetry Evenings, includes some of the
greatest poets of the world. A house of poetry exists in Struga, the only
one of this kind in the world.
The famous bridge where the Struga's Poetry Evenings take place;
Struga is also the birth place of the outstanding poets and educators, the brothers Dimitrija and Konstantin Miladinov.
Struga is an important tourist resort on the shores of lake Ohrid. There are several cultural monuments in Struga and its vicinity. The largest number of guests visit the Monastery of Kalista, laying on the very shores of the lake a few kilometres away from the centre of the town.
