The Macedonian Orthodox Cathedral Church Saint Sophia in Ohrid, dedicated to Jesus as the Holy Wisdom, is one of most beautiful and important medieval churches in Ohrid. One of the signs for its importance is the fact that the church can be seen on three different banknotes of Macedonian money. It's a huge church with a most beautiful garden around it and lots of medieval frescoes to be seen inside (entrance fee of 100 denari, around €1.70). The church has increased over the centuries and it was partly built using stones, partly with bricks. This way it is easier to determine which part of the church is the oldest. On the western side of the church are a lot of open air seatings for various events and an information board in two languages:
The Cathedral Church Saint Sophia
(dedicated to Jesus as the Holy Wisdom)
It is one of the largest and certainly one of the most notable Medieval Churches in this region. Built upon the foundations of an old Christian construction, in the time of Tsar Samuel (976-1014), this church was the seat of the Patriarchate of Ohrid, later on the cathedral church of the Archbishopric of Ohrid, and this Archbishopric in the subsequent centuries likewise distributed its church authority across the following territories: from Danube to the North, to the shores of Albania to the West, and to the Thermaic Gulf to the East.
The church has been refurbished several times, and after the arrival of the Ottoman Turks, in the second half of the 15th century, the church was converted into a mosque and the frescos were covered with lime. During the Balkan Wars (1912) the church was used as a storehouse for weapons. After the Second World War, in the period between 1949 and 1956, the frescos were cleaned and preserved, and architectural interventions were also conducted. The paintings in this church represent a topmost achievement in the Medieval Art of Macedonia and over a wider area. It covers the most important preserved pieces of Byzantine monumental art. The church benefactor of the paintings, the Archbishop of Ohrid Leon, namely an authorized negotiator in the longstanding dogmatic and theological dispute with Rome (1025-1054), which ended with a schism, visualized in this church a gallery of portraits, over sixty ecclesiastic dignitaries of the Churches of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch and Cyprus, along with the portraits of six popes of the Roman Church. In this church Saint Cyril of Thessaloniki (and preserved fragments of Saint Methodius) and Saint Clement of Ohrid are portrayed in full, by which the Ecumenical status of the ecclesiastic seat of Ohrid is confirmed. At the same time, these are the oldest preserved frescoes of these saints in Byzantine art.
Only in Saint Sophia, in the world's largest gallery of archpriests, dignitaries from the Eastern and Western Christian Churches are painted together, which cannot be found elsewhere in Byzantine art or in the art of the Slavic countries. In addition to its importance as a monument, Saint Sophia is still an active church, and due to its magnificent acoustics, this church represents a key location for cultural events - concerts and plays from 1961 onwards.