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Skopje (Capital city, Macedonia)

Скопје

Flag of Skopje, vertical and horizontal versions - Images by Ivan Sache, 25 June 2006, after the Skopje official website.

Status of Skopje
Flag of Skopje
Skopje in Socialist Yugoslavia

See also:

Status of Skopje

The new organization of Skopje was prescribed by the administrative reform adopted on 24 August 2004. In 1994, Skopje was divided into five components: Čair, Centar, Gazi Baba, Karpoš and Kisela Voda. This superseded the earlier division (1968) into Idadija, Kale and Kisela Voda.
The new organization caused political trouble because it made of Skopje a blinigual city, the proportion of Albanians reaching 27% after the incorporation of some Albanian villages. The same situation occurred in Kičevo and Struga. Opponents to the law collected more than the required number of signatures to organize a referendum which would cause the return of the 1994 law. The referendum failed and the new law was confirmed.

The Law on the City of Skopje says:

I. General Regulations
Article 5.
The City of Skopje has a coat of arms and flag that are used on its whole territory.
The municipalities in the City of Skopje have their own coats of arms and flags that are used simultaneously with the coat of arms and flag of the City of Skopje.

II. Organization of the City of Skopje
Article 7.
The area of the City of Skopje is made of the territories of the municipalities of: Aerodrom, Butel, Gazi Baba, Gjorče Petrov, Karpoš, Kisela Voda, Saraj, Centar, Čair and Šuto Orizari, within the boundaries determined by this law. [The boundaries are defined in great detail in Article 8].

Ivan Sache, 25 June 2006

Flag of Skopje

The flag of the city of Skopje is a red vertical banner in ratio 1:2 with the coat of arms of the city in yellow placed in the canton. Over the last years,I have seen many horizontal variants of the flag hoisted on the streets, in the same ratio and with coat of arms of the city in yellow placed in the canton.
The coat of arms of the city is very similar to the one used in the Socialist Yugoslavia.

Valentin Poposki & Ivan Sache, 24 June 2006

Skopje in Socialist Yugoslavia

Possible old flag of Skopje - Image by Jens Pattke, 3 February 2002

The flag of Skopje was seen in an exhibition of Socialist partner cities of Dresden (then in German Democratic Republic), in the beginning of the 1980s.

However, this flag was not necessarily the official city flag of Skopje. Among the other flags shown in the exhibition, the flag of Leningrad was striking. That flag was a white cloth, with the coat of arms (from the Soviet time) in the middle. I am not aware that the City of Leningrad had a flag. It was common in the GDR to put the municipal coat of arms on a white cloth if there was not any official city flag. The organizer of the exhibition perhaps helped himself so. The flags of Ustí nad Labem (Czech Republic), Wrocław (Poland) and Dresden shown in the exhibition were the known flags with pre-1990 arms.

Jens Pattke, 3 February 2002

The emblem must have been adopted in the 1950s or even before. In any case it was shown on 1969 postage stamps of Yugoslavia.

Željko Heimer, 3 February 2002