Urban Landscape Evliya Çelebi Might Have Seen: Reverse Mapping of the Seventeenth-Century Skopje

The contemporary remapping of historical periods offers new readings of the urban development process by viewing each stage as a distinct layer within a complex historical urban landscape, per New Heritage Paradigm principles. The author of this paper uses historical and contemporary documents to reconstruct the missing map of seventeenth-century Skopje. Drawing from Evliya Çelebi’s Travelogue and other documents, the study links the described structures to geographic locations. Supplementary data from various sources refine the understanding of Skopje’s urban fabric during Ottoman rule, adding thirty-nine structures to the Travelogue depiction of the city. The results are presented in the composite map of Skopje from the seventeenth century, which contains a total of sixty-eight sites. Through this map, the historical urban landscape is connected to the modern one, serving as a new source for studying seventeenth-century Skopje at a specific point in time, aiding the planning of Ottoman heritage sites.