A house from 1927 on „Dimitar Vlahov" street in Ohrid has been demolished - and the institutions meant to protect the city's heritage are now passing the responsibility from one to another. The citizens' initiative „Ohrid SOS" raises a question that stings: what are institutions for, if it is citizens' associations that have to document what's lost?

The Office for Protection of Cultural Heritage claims it had no jurisdiction, because the building was outside the contact zone of the old town core - even though neighbouring buildings are still on the register. According to the activists, jurisdiction was first confirmed, then denied. A classic institutional game in which, in the end, no one is to blame.

The timing is not innocent. The request for emergency protection, the initiative says, arrived before a long weekend - and the building was demolished on a day off, before anyone could react. „The building was demolished on a day off before we could respond," they announced.

Behind the single case lies a wider erosion. According to „Ohrid SOS", as many as 56 buildings have been erased from the list of cultural assets - supposedly due to demolition or inappropriate reconstruction. The house on „Dimitar Vlahov", they recall, was at one point home to a socialist-era medical institution and a place of historical significance during the Second World War.

It is not the first time. Activists recall the demolition of the „Park" restaurant, the work of a well-known local architect, also torn down during the pandemic lockdown with no institutional response. The question, in the end, is not architectural but moral: what else has to happen for those in charge to do the job they exist for? Ohrid is sold to the world as a museum-city - and the museum is crumbling piece by piece, on days off, when no one is watching.