Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
Documents that Macedonia's Special Prosecution, SJO, seized on Tuesday with a court order from the Culture Ministry refer to a million-euros-worth tender to build the Museum of VMRO and Macedonian Struggle for Independence...The SJO [...] says it will reveal the start of two new investigations. If one refers to "Skopje 2014", it will be the first-ever serious criminal investigation into this costly project which, according to BIRN’s database, has cost 667 million euros already. — Balkan Insight
Balkan Insight reports that the hefty €667 million+ price tag (approx. $730 million+) of the grandiose revamp “was mainly due to the signing of 123 contracts with firms and individuals for its construction, many of which were annexes to the original contract.”Balkan Investigative Reporting... View full entry
Two nights before New Year’s Eve, more than a thousand Macedonians gathered in the snow to hold hands and form a ring around a large shopping mall in the capital city of Skopje. That may sound like the beginning to some strange joke, but the crowd was assembled in earnest, to express its love of the modernist building known as GTC, and to protest a government plan to give it a new, baroque façade. — hyperallergic.com
... in a city whose architecture is mostly modernist, all of the Skopje 2014 building is being done in a strictly neoclassical style, from a brand new triumphal arch to a towering sculpture of a man on a horse — presumably, but not explicitly, Alexander the Great — atop a column adorned with... View full entry
The Macedonian government has spent huge sums turning its capital, Skopje, into a neo-baroque architectural nightmare. The project's gaudy excesses camouflage a disastrous economy and troubling record on human rights. — spiegel.de
