Founded in 1973, the National Museum of History in Sofia contains more than 650,000 exhibits and is one of the largest history museums on the Balkans. The aim of the museum is to provide a comprehensive view on Bulgarian history from the prehistory to present, in as broad an European context as possible.
This supersized pile of Italianate-styled marble has been a giant receptacle for Skopje's recent splurge on government-led monuments to boost national pride.
Sitting inside a concrete brutalist structure – awful to some, fascinating to others – the museum's solid historical and ethnological displays are housed in a sorry state.
The mirrored-glass entrance is bizarrely unwelcoming, but once inside this is a moving museum with fascinating displays that commemorate the all-but-lost Sephardic Jewish culture of North Macedonia through a range of photos, English-language wall texts, maps and video.
