With this website I want to express my Feelings to the most lauded town on the Balkans - the town of the tradesmen, consulates and pianos, the town of Bitola.
In the end of the 19th century, due to its location, the most mannerly town - as many people define it, turned into a chief strategic, military, administrative, political, trading, and cultural center of the European Part of the Ottoman Empire.
As a site of the Bitola Vilayet, with its seven markets, the Bezisten, over 1000 craftsmen and 2000 stores, Bitola presented a key center of the trading between Vienna and Istanbul.
The rich Bitola guildsmen and tradesmen built magnificent object of which the old city style has given Bitola an authentic and national character.
‘I never found a town like Bitola’
Bitola - A metropolis of culture and arts
In this city in the southern part of the Republic of Macedonia there are celebrated various cultural festivals every year. Almost every month there is a festival or a project concerning cultural activities. “That’s the way how to enrich the cultural life of the people living in this city”.
E. g. the mobile culture container visited the City of Bitola in 2002. A lot of young people were able to take part in European projects and had the chance to meet the Culture of Europe.
Interfest Bitola is the most popular festival on the Balkan peninsula for classical music and arts. Every august of every year artists and solists are traveling to Bitola to take part on the 10-days lasting festival.
The summer highlight is the festival of the Manaki brothers every August. These brothers were the first using a “camcorder” and they took the first moving pictures on the Balkans. Link
Other important festivals: The Nights of Heraclea, Small Monmarte of Bitola, Serenada of Bitola, etc.