National Gallery of North Macedonia
National art collection shown in two domed Ottoman bath houses at the edge of the Old Bazaar.
The National Gallery was founded in 1948 and has its main home in the Daut Pasha Hammam, a fifteenth-century bath house built for an Ottoman governor of Rumelia at the southern edge of the Old Bazaar. The building is one of the largest surviving hammams in the Balkans, a run of thirteen domed chambers of differing sizes lit by star-shaped openings cut through the vaults. A second gallery building, the Cifte Hammam, stands a few streets away and is used for temporary exhibitions.
The collection covers Macedonian and wider Balkan art from the medieval period to the present. Icons and fragments of wall painting rescued from churches are shown alongside nineteenth-century woodcarving, then the painters of the twentieth century, among them Lazar Licenoski, Nikola Martinoski and Vangel Kodzoman, and contemporary sculpture, prints and installation. The domed rooms give each work a separate space, and the gallery runs a continuous programme of anniversary and solo exhibitions across both buildings.
Highlights
- Fifteenth-century Daut Pasha Hammam, among the largest in the Balkans
- Thirteen domed chambers lit through star-shaped vault openings
- Icons and wall paintings shown with modern Macedonian painting
- Second exhibition building at the nearby Cifte Hammam
