Venue

Ohrid, Macedonia. Hotel Millenium Palace - Ohrid

Ohrid is one of the most ancient towns of Europe, flavoured with the taste of the past centuries, proud on its cultural heritage and the unique lake, both belonging to the UNESCO's World Natural and Cultural Heritage. In the classical and medieval periods it used to be an artistic, cultural and spiritual centre of the Balkans, and today again no “cultural vultures” can reasonably leave out Ohrid from their itineraries. History has no spared the city but could never destroy it.

Lake Ohrid rightly deserves the name “Macedonia’s freshwater sea”. Not only for its warm water blue colour, which gains its intensity from the sky blue colour, but because of its size, this lake gives an impression of being a sea. It covers an area of 358 square kilometres and one gets an impression of being in front of a large bay of the sea as if a part had been uprooted of the sea’s breadth, and launched among high mountains 695 meters above sea level. On its northern shore the ancient city of Ohrid, rises above the lake like some colossal piece of scenery, located on a double hill with highest point at Samuel’s Fortress 800 m. above sea level. With its unique flora and fauna the lake is one of the largest biological reserves in Europe. The earliest scientific studies, undertaken in the course of the 19th century, showed that, as one of the oldest lakes in the world, it has preserved primeval life - forms which no longer exist in other places or only exist as fossils.