Monastery of Saint Naum

At the far southern end of Lake Ohrid, where the shoreline turns toward Albania, the monastery of Saint Naum sits on a rocky rise above the water, its small stone church crowned by two domes and surrounded by gardens and the springs that feed the lake. Its story reaches back to the very beginnings of Slavic literacy.

Its founder, Naum, was a disciple of Saints Cyril and Methodius and a companion of Clement of Ohrid, part of the circle that carried the new Slavonic liturgy and alphabet into the First Bulgarian Empire. The monastery was established around the turn of the 10th century, traditionally dated to 905, with the support of the Bulgarian rulers Boris and Simeon, and dedicated to the Holy Archangels. Naum died in 910 and was buried in his own church; he was soon venerated as a saint, and his tomb became a place of pilgrimage. In Ottoman times Muslims came here as well: the Bektashi believed their holy man Sari Saltik lay buried at the site, and the relics were thought to cure illnesses of the mind. A local tradition tells that Naum and Clement agreed to begin their two monasteries at opposite ends of the lake at the same moment, signalled by a bell on a rope stretched across the water, and that seagulls landing on the rope rang it early.

The original church was destroyed sometime between the 10th and 13th centuries, and the present building rose on its foundations around the 16th century in two stages: first the nave and narthex, then the two domes. It follows the cross-in-square plan with a dome on four pillars, and the saint's tomb occupies a separate chamber under its own broad, low dome. A fragment found beneath the floor names the painter Trpo, son of Konstantin of Korçë, as author of earlier wall paintings, and the later frescoes include a donor portrait of Prince Boris from 1806. The surrounding valley holds other small churches, including ones beside the springs of the Black Drin. The area changed hands in the 20th century: it belonged to Albania from 1912 until 1925, when Ahmed Zogu ceded it to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Rebecca West devoted a chapter of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon to her visit in 1937.

Getting there

The monastery lies on the southern shore of Lake Ohrid in North Macedonia, in the area of the village of Ljubaništa, about 29 km south of the town of Ohrid along the lakeside road. The Albanian lakeside town of Pogradec is about 7.5 km away in a straight line, across the border. The nearest airport is Ohrid St. Paul the Apostle (OHD), about 30 km to the north.