Balconies let light and warmth come into our homes, or the coolness of our gardens during summer nights. They can be our living rooms, bedrooms and gardens combined, so people from Veles never built them unless they had a view of the river.
Balcony of Hadzi Konstantin’s house
When we talk about authentic architecture of town houses we usually refer to Ohrid, a city proud of its preserved urban core, the Kaneo quart, which is about a hundred years old. Krusevo owes the uniqueness of its a hundred years old urban milieu to poor economic development, low living standards and emigration. Citizens of Veles, on the other hand, have the privilege of living in a town of uniform 19th century style and can brag with so much ancestral spirit living in their houses that no extensions or upgrades could deform. Veles is architecturally so peculiar that even modernists pushing their ideas of building a “bright future” with mallets in their hands could not destroy. It is a town of huge architectural heritage for future generations.
The question now is whether these generations will continue building sheet metal upgrades and use local bricks to create incredibly kitsch pieces of architecture, or they might become aware of the damage they are doing, aware of the fact that they are filling up a diamond mine with dirt.
Veles National Museum is responsible for maintenance of the houses of famous Macedonian activists and authors and by turning them into museums allows visitors to enjoy the talent of old Veles architects. They are the House of Solevi (where Kosta Racin lived), the Museum of Vasil Glavinov, the House of Jordan Hadzi Konstantinov-Dzinot and the House of Kasapovi which took the longest to restore.
People of Veles had an incredible sense of coexistence. They were faced with the problem of building on a very unfavorable ground, mainly rocky and often erosive, on the right bank of the river, on a hill called Kojnik, and then continuing on the left bank simply naming the quart as Otsprotiva (Opposite).
House, part of the Complex Varnalii – impossible to build balconies due to houses’ proximity, but windows seem to suit the purpose
Balconies let light and warmth come into their homes, or the coolness of their gardens during summer nights. They served as living rooms, bedrooms and gardens combined, so people from Veles never built them unless they had a view of the river valley and the guardian rocks at the entrance of the gorge. Everybody was entitled to the same view, to that huge window that let in the blue skies and bright sunshine. Nowadays, many of those balconies do not suit the purpose. They have either been knocked down or closed with plexiglass sheets, but most often the balcony has a view of the walls of new buildings.
Climbing up to Dzinot’s balcony requires “hill skills”
Old architecture had soul and was based on the solidarity of the people of Veles. In almost every yard or house dating back to the Ottoman period there is a secret hiding place with underground passages that surface several houses away for the purpose of hiding their children in the houses of their neighbours in times of trouble.
Nowadays, that kind of coexistence is virtually impossible. Present inhabitants of Veles have a completely different vision of what their houses should look like and they seem to like rubbing the edges of their extensions against the neighbours’ house.
Ljubomir Kostovski
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