Central Skopje

Modern-day Skopje, like several other Balkan cities, can only be understood with some knowledge of the catastrophes that have shaped it. The most important of these was an earthquake in 1963, which killed about a thousand people and destroyed a huge proportion of the city's buildings, including the homes of around 100,000 people. 
The wily Marshal Tito was able to extract aid from both East and West (including several countries significantly poorer than Yugoslavia), and a massive construction program got under way. As a result much of Skopje's architecture, especially south of the Vardar river, dates from the 1960s and 1970s. Fortunately not all of Skopje's heritage was lost, and the northern half of the city still preserves many reminders of Skopje's heyday as an important trading town of the Ottoman Empire.