KARPOŠ-UPRISING SQUARE

This square (Плоштад Карпошово Востание, Ploštad Karpošovo Vostanie) is an obligatory passage when taking the stone bridge to visit Skopje's eastern shore. Left empty after the 1963 earthquake, it is now occupied by a series of ugly and kitschy monuments created as part of the "Skopje 2014" project. It was supposed to be named after Alexander the Great's father, King Philip II of Macedonia. But due to protests from Greece, it was renamed after the local uprising in October 1689 against the Ottomans led by the Bulgarian Petar Karpoš. At the far end of the square is the Warrior 's Monument, a 15 meter high statue of Phillip II on a 13 meter high pedestal. In the center stands the fountain of the Mothers of Macedonia with four statues evoking Olympias, wife of Philip II and mother of Alexander. Two other fountains adorn the square, while the stone bridge is guarded by statues of the insurgents Gjorgji Pulevski (1817-1895) and Petar Karpoš (c. 1655-1689), and then by those of the Slavic evangelizing saints Cyril and Methodius, on one side, and Clement and Naum of Ohrid, on the other. Finally, the square is bordered by the Museum of Macedonian Struggle, the Holocaust Museum, the Church of St. Demetrios, the buildings of the Nikolovski Faculty of Music and the Nikolovski School of Dance (1960s-1970s), the curved Ibni-Pajko building (1938), the Stone Bridge Hotel and the National Archaeological Museum.