Two small churches · 14th century
Two small 14th-century churches facing each other by the Lower Gate, named after a medieval hospital that, by tradition, stood here.
These are the stories you can open in the 3D view, each at its own numbered point on the model.
Two small churches stand here, facing each other across a narrow lane near the old Lower Gate: St. Nicholas Bolnički and the Holy Mother of God Bolnička. Both take their name from the quarter. By local tradition a hospital, in Macedonian a bolnica, stood here in the Middle Ages. Both churches are often closed, but the yards are open.
St. Nicholas Bolnički was built and painted in 1313. It is a single nave, covered inside by a barrel vault, with a small apse to the east. From outside it is a plain box of rubble stone and brick under a tile roof. The frescoes inside belong to the same years as the building, the time when Archbishop Gregory added the new front to St. Sophia.
Look at the top of the west wall. Instead of a bell tower, the wall itself rises into an open arch that holds a bell. This is a bell-gable, in Macedonian a preslica. The Macedonian Wikipedia describes it as the only one in the country and sees in it an influence of the architecture of the Adriatic coast. Treat that as one source's view.
On the south side stood a chapel added in the 15th century. Only its small apse survives against the church. Along the east side of the yard run the remains of the town wall, which once came down the hill to the lake. A tower of it still stands beside the garden. Close by was the Lower Gate, one of the three gates of the walled town, about fifty metres from the shore.
The church across the lane is the Holy Mother of God Bolnička, a small single-nave church of the 14th century. Its paintings were renewed in 1834. Inside stands a walnut iconostasis, the screen of icons before the sanctuary, carved in 1833 by Nikola Darkovski Karadžovik of the village of Lazaropole.
At the west end of Bolnička a timber porch on four posts shelters the door, and a lower lean-to roof runs along the south side. The walls are rubble stone with some brick, under red canal tiles. The yard around it is paved and walled, a quiet corner between the lanes of the lower town and the lake front.
Typical prices are our estimates for orientation, not menu prices. Check opening hours on the spot.
Walk around the model, switch between day and night, and hear each story read aloud in English, Macedonian or Turkish.
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