Bukovo

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Coordinates: 40°58′59″N 21°19′59″E / 40.98306, 21.33306
Bukovo Буково
A panorama of the village during the First World War.
Bukovo Location within Macedonia
Country	Macedonia
Municipality	Bitola municipality
Elevation	821 m (2,694 ft)
Population (2002)
- Total	3,494^[1]
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
- Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Postal code	7000
Area code(s)	+389 047
Car plates	BT

Bukovo (Macedonian: Буково, pronounced [/ˈbukɔvɔ/]) is a village in the Bitola municipality near the town of Bitola in the Republic of Macedonia. The village is famous for its very spicy paprika.

[edit] History

Local legend has it that the first families to settle in Bukovo had come from a much older village called "Neoljani" which was completed destroyed in a firestorm. The discovery of the ruins of a church—attested in statistical documents—at the base of nearby mountains are usually cited as proof of this.

Similarly, it is widely claimed that the upper quarter of the village was settled by people from the now long abandoned village of "Magarevo" and the lower quarter by people from the abandoned village of "Selište". In both cases, the ruins of houses can be found in adjacent areas. Others, however, believe that the original settlers were the fleeing residents of the ancient city of Heraclea following its devastating earthquake.

During its most prosperous period, the village had approximately 5,000 residents and over 600 students enrolled in its grammar school. As a municipality in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Bukovo was twice visited by King Alexander I as the "most orderly" village in all of Yugoslavia.

Throughout the 20th century, many residents left for Australia, the United States, Canada and areas of Western Europe in search of work. There are approximately 2,000 natives of Bukovo in the ethnic Macedonian diaspora, more than 800 of whom live in Rochester, New York, affectionately referred to as "Bukovo City" by Macedonians who live there. Many people from Bukovo made their way to Richmond, Australia.

The Bukovo monastery was once an important cultural center where monks would translate and copy sacred texts into the local vernacular. Time had deteriorated the monastery building leading residents to recently renovate it.

[edit] Demographics

19th century geographers write that Bukovo was once a completely Orthodox Christian village with a school run by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.^[2]

According to the 2002 census,^[3] the village had a total population of 3,494 people of which 3,456 were Macedonians (98.9%), 14 Turks (0.4%), 11 ethnic Albanians (0.3%), 6 Serbs (0.1%), 1 Aromanian (Vlach) with a further 6 residents declaring something else.