Europe 2023

Skopje is the capital and largest city of North Macedonia. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic center.

Scupi is attested for the first time in the second century CE as a city in Roman Dardania. When the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western halves in 395 AD, Scupi came under Byzantine rule from Constantinople. During much of the early medieval period, the town was contested between the Byzantines and the Bulgarian Empire, whose capital it was between 972 and 992.

From 1282, the town was part of the Serbian Empir and acted as its capital city from 1346 to 1371. In 1392, Skopje was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, who called it Üsküb. The town stayed under Ottoman control for over 500 years, serving as the capital of the pashasanjak of Üsküp and later the Vilayet of Kosovo. In 1912, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Serbia during the Balkan Wars. During the First World War, the city was seized by the Kingdom of Bulgaria, and, after the war, it became part of the newly formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia as the capital of Vardarska Banovina. In the Second World War, the city was again captured by Bulgaria and in 1945 became the capital of SR Macedonia, a federated state within the Yugoslavia. The city developed rapidly, but this was interrupted in 1963 when it was hit by a disastrous earthquake.

According to the last official census from 2021, Skopje had a population of 422,540 inhabitants in its urban area.Läs mer