Bitola came up on our trip because someone in the group had seen a photograph of Širok Sokak — the long pedestrianised boulevard in the centre of the city — and said it looked like somewhere from a Wes Anderson film. This is not inaccurate. We booked flights to Skopje the following week.
What Bitola Is
Bitola is the second-largest city in North Macedonia, sitting in a valley in the southwest of the country close to the Greek border. It was once one of the most important cities in the Ottoman Empire — a diplomatic hub where European powers maintained consulates and the cosmopolitan elite of the Balkans came to trade and be seen.
The consulates are still there, lining the main boulevard, now mostly converted into cafés and restaurants. The city wears its Ottoman and neoclassical heritage lightly, without the heavy tourist infrastructure that would develop around such streets in Western Europe. There are no ticket barriers. No audio guides. You just walk through it.
Širok Sokak
The main boulevard is genuinely one of the most beautiful streets in the Balkans. Long, wide, lined with nineteenth-century buildings in various states of elegant decay, populated in the evenings by the entire city taking its evening walk. The Macedonian tradition of the korzo — the evening promenade — is alive here in a way it isn't in most European cities.
We sat at a café on the boulevard on our first evening and watched three generations of families strolling past for two hours. It was one of the most purely pleasant things we did on the whole trip.
"I've been to forty countries. I've never been somewhere that felt so completely itself, so unconcerned with performing for visitors." — Ana, who has since been back twice
The Heraclea Lyncestis
At the edge of the city, a short walk from the centre, are the ruins of an ancient Greek city founded by Philip II of Macedon — father of Alexander the Great — in the 4th century BC. The mosaics here, particularly in the early Christian basilicas, are among the best-preserved anywhere in the Balkans. We had them almost entirely to ourselves on a Tuesday morning.
Practical Notes
Bitola is not expensive. This is an understatement. A three-course dinner with wine for four people cost less than one person's dinner in London. The quality was outstanding. Macedonian cuisine — influenced by Ottoman, Greek and Serbian traditions — is deeply underrated internationally.
There is one good hotel in the city centre and several excellent guesthouses. We stayed in a guesthouse run by a family who had been in the same building for four generations. Breakfast included homemade burek, fresh yoghurt, and local honey. We were not in a hurry to leave.