Museum-Church Raises Hackles in Macedonian Capital

Plans to build a museum in the style of a medieval church in Skopje's old fortress have fallen foul of the country's tense ethnic relations.

“We are stopping all ongoing works until we clear things up,” the head of the directorate for Protection of Cultural Heritage, Pasko Kuzman, told Balkan Insight.

The museum was being constructed on the foundations of a recently excavated 14th-century Orthodox church in the old fortress that dominates the skyline of the capital.

The style and location of the building stirred suspicions among Albanians, who saw it as an attempt by the Christian Macedonian majority to gain a foothold in what the mainly Muslim Albanians see as their side of town.

The Islamic Religious Community initially demanded the parallel construction of a mosque within the fortress.

Macedonia’s strongest Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, a partner in the centre-right VMRO-DPMNE-led government, on Monday also came out in opposition, saying the building would offend ethnic Albanians. They suspected the museum would eventually be given to the Macedonian Orthodox Church and turned into a house of worship.

"Our message is that Albanians also contribute to and have responsibility for the creation of cultural traditions in Macedonia," Izet Mexhiti, the DUI mayor of the Skopje municipality of Cair, said on Monday. He was joined by several DUI legislators.

Kuzman insisted that the building, which preserves only the contours of the earlier church, would be used solely for displaying archeological findings excavated at the fortress in recent years. 

The row over the museum recalled the heated discussions of 2009 and 2010 about whether the state should build an Orthodox church in the centre of Skopje, near the main square.

All ethnic Albanian parties and many Albanian NGOs conditioned support for the church with the parallel erection of a mosque at a nearby location.

The authorities eventually abandoned the idea to build a church but gave the site to the Orthodox Church, which has since remained silent about the possible start of construction.

In 2001, Macedonia suffered a short-lived armed conflict between ethnic Albanian insurgents and the security forces. The conflict ended with the so-called Ohrid peace deal, which guaranteed greater rights for the Albanians who make up about a quarter of the population of the country.

The former leaders of the insurgents then formed the DUI, which has since then been by far the strongest ethnic Albanian party in Macedonia.