Ohrid on beautiful lake promenade and St. Sophia church

Ohrid is a city in the Republic of Macedonia and the seat of Ohrid Municipality. It is the largest city on Lake Ohrid and the eighth-largest city in the country with over 42,000 inhabitants as of 2002. Ohrid is notable for once having had 365 churches, one for each day of the year, and has been referred to as a "Jerusalem (of the Balkans)".  In antiquity the city was known under the ancient Greek: Lychnidos and Latin: Lychnidus, probably meaning "city of light". By 879 AD, the town was no longer called Lychnidos but was referred to by the Slavs as Ohrid, possibly from the Slavic words "vo hrid", meaning "on the hill", as the ancient town of Lychnidos was at the top of the hill.

The citadel of Tsar Samuil, as the city castle is usually called today, stands on the highest point in the city, the city hill Gorni Saraj. It was part of the fortifications that surrounded the city. The first traces of a fortification, which was possibly further expanded by Philip II of Macedon, come from the Illyrians in the 4th century BC. BC

On the foundations of an early Christian church, a three-aisled cathedral with three apses, a mighty dome over the central part and a bell tower in front of the western facade was built in the 11th century under the Greek Archbishop Leo (1036–56).