Voskopoja

Voskopoja, Moscopole to its Aromanian inhabitants, was in the eighteenth century one of the largest and wealthiest towns in the Balkans, a centre of Aromanian trade and learning with a printing press, an academy and something between twenty and thirty churches, and then it was sacked repeatedly from the 1760s and reduced to a village of a few hundred people, which is what it remains. Several of the churches survive: Saint Nicholas, Saint Athanasius, Saint Mary and others, low stone basilicas with porches, and inside them wall paintings of the eighteenth century by the Zografi brothers and their contemporaries, covering nave and porch. The setting is high pasture and pine at about 1,150 metres, and the contrast between the buildings and the village is the point.

History

The chronicler Gjon Muzaka, writing in 1510, described a place called Voskop as abandoned, and the town grew up as a trade node linking the Korçë basin with Berat, Vlorë and Durrës, becoming in the 18th century the cultural and commercial centre of the Aromanians. At its peak in the middle of that century it had the first printing house in the Ottoman Balkans outside Constantinople, schools and many churches, a centre of Greek culture with Albanian and Aromanian elements and strong Western influence. In 1769 irregular bands attacked and almost wrecked it, by one account in reprisal for the townspeople's part in preparing a Greek revolt backed by Russia, and after the sack of 1788 and the flight of its people the campaign of Ali Pasha of Ioannina left the once prosperous city a small village (Wikipedia, Voskopojë).

Highlights

• Eighteenth-century painted churches - Zografi brothers frescoes in several.
• Saint Nicholas and Saint Athanasius - the best preserved of the group.
• A vanished Balkan city - a village on the site of a large town.
• Highland pasture and pine - the setting at over eleven hundred metres.

When to go

May to October; snow closes the road in winter and the village is a small ski destination then. Half a day. Churches are locked and need a keeper, so ask in the village or arrange in Korca.

Things to know

Churches are almost always locked and finding the keeper is the main difficulty; some visitors see none of the interiors. Interiors are dim and a torch helps. There is minimal interpretation. The road up is winding.

Nearby

Korca is east; Dardha lies south in the same hills.

Key facts