Home / The Old urban houses tell their stories / The Jewish House

The Jewish House

NEW

The Jewish House

 The richly ornamented façade is physical evidence of the commercial capital accumulated by the ethnically diverse communities that tied their fate to this building, and hence its place in the Path of Capital. The succession of owners of different origins and faiths, without their actions changing the character of the home, also inscribes it in the Path of Ideas: shared space as a form of coexistence.

The house is an important example of late-Ottoman urban residential architecture with noticeable elements of eclecticism and Neoclassicism, characteristic of Balkan towns around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Built of local stone, with massive walls and sharply accentuated corner quoins, it possesses a visual stability and a sense of monumentality. The façade is partially rendered, retaining the contrast between the rough stone structure and the finished, ornamented parts.

In 1911, the Jewish family left Kratovo on the eve of the Balkan Wars, leaving behind a house with richly ornamented windows and a shop selling ammonia and candles. The building changed owners: it was registered successively in the name of Abdul, then Stefan Mazhev, then Manas Manasov. For a short period, Dr Nikola Nezlobinski, a Russian physician who left for Struga in 1921, also lived there. The appearance of the building, however, remained unchanged.

Architectural typology specialists suggest a mediaeval origin with subsequent reconstructions, while the material evidence points to 1911. The house is part of the protected monumental ensemble "Old Urban Core of Kratovo" and is among the most decorative objects in the city. The interior is authentically preserved: a cellar, two floors, and windows with rich ornamentation, as well as some of those whose names were not preserved in the documents.

The Jewish House has a wrought-iron balcony, similar to the balcony of the Karakostova House in Dupnitsa.