Hilltop fortress · 6th century
The walled hilltop above the river, first fortified in the 6th century, with a viewpoint over the city and Vodno.
These are the stories you can open in the 3D view, each at its own numbered point on the model.
Kale is the walled hilltop above the north bank of the Vardar, the highest point of the old city, and it appears on Skopje's coat of arms. The walls enclose about three and a half hectares, some 320 by 175 metres. Inside are lawns, paths and excavations. Entry is free; OpenStreetMap gives opening hours of 7:00 to 18:00, which may change with the season.
People lived on this hill from the Neolithic. The first fortress was built in the 6th century, probably under Emperor Justinian I, after the earthquake of 518 had destroyed the Roman city of Scupi to the north-west. Its builders used yellow limestone and travertine, and they reused stones from Scupi, among them blocks with Roman inscriptions.
The fortress was rebuilt in the 10th and 11th centuries. In the Middle Ages Skopje was held in turn by Byzantium, by the Bulgarian state of the late 10th and early 11th centuries, and by Serbia. In 1346 the Serbian ruler Stefan Dušan was crowned emperor in Skopje. How these medieval states are framed today is disputed, so the guide simply names the rulers.
The Ottomans took Skopje in 1392. The traveller Evliya Çelebi, writing in 1660, read an inscription over the gate dated 1446, and described double walls, a five-sided plan and seventy bastions. The double line can still be traced on the south side: an outer wall low on the slope, then the inner wall with the South Gate between two towers.
The earthquake of 1963 damaged the fortress. Excavations that began in 2006 and 2007 found traces of life on the hill going back to about 3000 BC, and in 2010 the largest hoard of Byzantine coins ever found in the country. The low walls drawn on the lawns here stand for such excavated foundations; their layout in the model is schematic.
From the viewpoint terrace the old city falls away to the Vardar. Below are the Stone Bridge and Macedonia Square, and beyond them rises Mount Vodno, 1,066 metres at its top, Krstovar. The white Millennium Cross on the summit, 66 metres high, was built in 2002 to mark two thousand years of Christianity, and it is lit at night.
The north-east gate faces the slope where the Mustafa Pasha Mosque and the church of St. Saviour stand. Its long wall rises to a low gable over a round-arched gateway framed in brick, and a flag mast stands above it. From here paths cross the lawns to the South Gate and the viewpoint terrace.
Kale's towers are of two kinds. The broad round tower on the west keeps a single large arched window, and on the north side a tall square tower carries a small tiled roof. Between them run walls of rubble and coursed stone, about eight to twelve metres high, with a crenellated wall-walk along the top.
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.
Open in 3D
