Delčevo

Delčevo (Делчево, ), is a small town in the eastern mountainous part of the Republic of Macedonia. It is the municipal seat of the eponymous municipality. The town is named after revolutionary Goce Delčev.

Demographics

Delčevo has 11,500 residents.

	Number	%
TOTAL	11,500	100
Macedonians	10,761	93.57
Roma	564	4.90
others	175	1.52

Geographical Position

The town of Delčevo is situated at the foot of Mount Golak on both banks of the river Bregalnica, to the east of Skopje. It is the biggest settlement in the Pianec region which covers an area of , between Mount Osogovo to the north and Mount Maleš to the south. The town lies at to above sea level. Delčevo has a good geographical position and good traffic connections. All rural settlements and recreations centred around Golak are connected with the town of Delčevo by good asphalt roads of local and regional types. Golak's Tourist Center is located south of Delcevo at height above sea level, under the Chavka peak (1358 m) of the mountain Golak. The distinctive Recreation Center was built in 1981 and has 5 apartments, 8 hotel rooms and a restaurant with 170 seats as its own terens for small football, basketball and volleyball.

History

Delčevo was first mentioned in a charter of Serbian Emperor Stefan Dušan in the 14th century.

The town has changed its name several times. During the Ottoman period it was visited by a Sultan personally. A large number of Christian people converted to Islam, and at that time the town was called "Sultania" or "Sultaniye". The Islamised Christian population hadn't learned the Turkish language and they renamed Sultania into their own language, Tsarevo Selo (Tsar's village). One year before Sultan Mehmed II, the Turkish travel writer Evlija Celebija had passed there and wrote: "After Vinica we climbed upon Kocani mountain meadow and after 4 hours walking along the ravine, we arrived in Tsarevo Selo. This is a Muslim village and it lays in the mountain ornamented with 100 houses and one marvelous mosque with minaret."

The town has borne its present name Delčevo since 1950, in honour of the celebrated revolutionary and ideologist Gotse Delchev who had often visited the place while he was teaching in the village of Novo Selo, near Štip.

After the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878 much of the Christian population left for Bulgaria and Turkish people from Asia moved in to take their place. There was a second big movement thirty years later during the Balkan wars, but this time with an emigration of much of the Turkish population.

Between the two world wars Delčevo was a small provincial town of dilapidated houses and a small number of craft shops with narrow muddy stree