Several Careful Owners

DURING a visit to North Macedonia I was able to walk the 12 miles or so around Lake Ohrid from my hotel near Kalishta monastery to a castle named after Bulgarian Tsar Samuel.

He ruled from 997 to 1014, much of his reign taken up with warfare against the Byzantine Empire.

Samuel moved the Bulgarian capital to the town of Ohrid, building what is now known as Samuel's Fortress on the site of previous fortifications believed to date back to Phillip II of Macedon, ie some 1,300+ years earlier.

Approaching through Ohrid's Muslim quarter

Outside the walls

Imposing tower

Inside the castle, parts of which have been reconstructed

Another inside view, with Lake Ohrid in the background

Looking through the battlements

Many views help the imagination run riot

Even on a cloudy day, the area is beautiful

Ohrid changed hands many times over the centuries, the city's conquerors including Byzantines, Normans, Serbs, Albanians and Turks.

But the castle does not seem to have had an equally exciting history, at least as far as I can discover.