The Kuklica site near the village outside Kratovo has been a natural monument since 2008. That means the state has had a legal obligation to protect, maintain and manage it for nineteen years. Instead, on Sunday at 19:30, officers from the Kratovo police detained 41-year-old S.D. from Kratovo after a report that roughly an hour and a half earlier she had physically attacked several people visiting the site.

On a prosecutor's order the woman was taken to the station and charges will be filed against her. It is not the first time. Only weeks earlier police said a woman with the initials S.D.B. had been found at Kuklica despite a court order barring her from the site. Police have still not officially confirmed whether it is the same person.

How a natural monument became a private tollbooth

In early June the municipality of Kratovo announced it had been prevented for a long stretch from managing the site, which, it said, had been unlawfully seized and held by the association Izvor - Kratovo, whose responsible parties are Miloš Dimitrovski and his daughter Stojna Dimitrovska Booth. The municipality won a first-instance civil ruling ordering the association and those connected to it to hand the area over to the municipal museum institution and remove the objects they had installed.

The ruling has been appealed. So it is not final. So the question of who commands a protected natural monument in Macedonia is waiting on a court.

And in the meantime? In the meantime, for months, there have been reports here of blocked access, unauthorised charging and aggressive behaviour towards domestic and foreign visitors. The claims come both from the municipality and from visitors themselves. The result is that a person who comes to see one of the country's best-known natural wonders can end up as a party to a police report.

Who pays the bill for the tourism image

Kuklica is the dot they put on every tourist guide to Macedonia. The stone figures are on all the promotional photographs. The reality on the ground is mutual accusations, court disputes, police interventions and incidents with visitors - instead of an organised site with clear rules, a ticket desk and opening hours.

The municipality is waiting for a final ruling. That is formally accurate and legally beyond dispute. But protecting a natural monument is not a civil dispute between two parties with equal rights - it is a state obligation. If an association can still be sitting on it nineteen years later, the question is not who wins the case. The question is why the case took this long in the first place.