If you want to see Skopje through the eyes of an algorithm that has never walked the city - look at the new billboard at the eastern entrance. A Bucephalus with five legs, a Stone Bridge stretching off into infinity, a church that looks more like Belgrade's „St. Sava” than anything in Skopje. And all of it Mayor Orce Gjorgjievski proudly announced in a video, with the words: „Every detail matters.”

Indeed, every detail matters - especially when it's wrong. The billboard that greets everyone arriving from the east with „Welcome to Skopje” set off an avalanche of ridicule on social media. Citizens counted the mistakes at once: the horse has five, some say even six legs. The fortress walls tower up like a medieval castle from France. The telecommunications tower atop Vodno is missing. And the whole image carries a stamp everyone recognised immediately - artificial intelligence in hands that don't know how to use it.

The opposition, of course, pounced. Levica was the sharpest: „The content resembles the hallucination of an algorithm handed a vague order to draw something Balkan, old and monumental. Alexander the Macedonian wears a cap like some sort of bey. Skopje did not win the European cultural title to be portrayed as a cheap computer mash-up of foreign temples, invented fortresses and mutant horses.”

From SDSM came the line that this is a „disgrace for Skopje” and yet another campaign of AI-generated images instead of real upkeep. „It's all campaign, no results,” they reacted, pointing out that right now, in the summer season, the number of foreign visitors is up - and right now the city is presenting itself with a visual fake.

Political mud-slinging aside, the question Levica raised is the one every taxpayer has a right to ask: who produced this, who approved it, and how much was paid? Because the billboard didn't appear on its own. Someone ordered it, someone accepted a design that would fail even the most cursory check, and someone paid for it - most likely from the city budget.

Skopje is preparing for one of Europe's most prestigious cultural titles. Instead, the first thing a guest from the east sees is a five-legged horse and an invented church. Funny? Yes. But also telling - of a city where the image has always mattered more than the substance, and a photomontage has always come cheaper than doing the actual work.