The houses of Kruševo survived wars, uprisings and two world wars - but they can't survive their own state. These architectural masterpieces of stone and wood, with the distinctive "tympanon" bearing the family crest, are today crumbling precisely under state protection. A paradox that says everything about how heritage is treated here.

The numbers are brutal. Kruševo has 32 privately owned protected residential houses declared individual cultural assets, plus another 12 protected buildings. But five houses are already in complete decay, dangerous to passers-by nearby. One house on "Manču Matak" street, once called "the beauty of Kruševo," is today a ruin.

The owners are trapped between status and reality. "Apart from on paper, the state hasn't invested a single denar in maintaining my protected house," says Kosta Mickovski. The protected status creates obstacles even for the smallest repairs: you need construction firms with an A-licence (of which there are barely any), multiple institutional approvals, and tenders often fail with the money returned to the budget. One resident waited five years to finish a roof.

The Ministry of Culture allocated around 7 million denars for 2026 for interventions on heritage - a sum that, for protecting an entire town, sounds almost symbolic. Installing solar panels on protected houses is also banned, and even municipalities aren't allowed to put panels on public buildings like schools.

The former director of the institute in Prilep proposes that municipalities set up "intervention funds" for co-financing. The municipality, for its part, says it has no direct authority - the decisions rest with the central institutions. And so the ball is passed from hand to hand, while "the beauty of Kruševo" turns to dust. Who will answer when the last one falls?