But during the beginning of the XX century, the decay of the Ottoman Empire and a wave of national liberation movements brought a series of wars ( Ilinden uprising in 1903, two Balkan Wars, 1912-1913) and most importantly the First World War (one of its main fronts went through the city), causing the  importance of the city as a regional center to diminish greatly.  

The multiculturality of Bitola also gets importantly diminished being that in different stages of this period different ethnic groups were forced to leave the city - the Turkish, after Ilinden uprising in 1903, and the Jewish in 1943. The history of conflicts was revived briefly in the context of the Yugoslav Wars when in 2001 important number of Albanians have been forced to leave the city.

We opened our Embroidery Office in Jagoda, a local cafe where we embroidered every day from 10 to 14h. The cafe was conveniently located close to the History Museum where we met Nade who was very  generous with information regarding the textile history of Macedonia, the different embroidery styles, their genealogy and meaning. The history of conflict is still very present in many of the stories we heard. For example in a traditional pastry shop Heraclea, highly recommended by friends, we met the original owner, now retired, who told us that during the conflicts in the 00's his shop was burned down. The story of how as a young pastry chef, strait out of training, he opened the store which ended up becoming a popular "institution" in  Bitola, and how after many years of struggling he finally retired, leaving the shop to his son, was fascinating. He told it with a tired  smile and a lot of grace.

The traditional textile techniques in Bitola are fascinating and also  bring with them stories that gave us a lot of curiosity. One traditional element in Macedonia garment folklore is the kjostik. It  is a refined craft made with a fine crochet needle, beads and a thin thread. A sculptural object, resembling an ornamented snake, which was  echoed in one of our embroideries. We found it interesting that during the uprising against the Ottoman empire, when many men were sent to prison, making kjostik was one of the most common pastimes for the jail-mates.

Bitola was also a place in which two Vlach brothers from Yanina, Yanaki and Milton Manaki, had chosen for their settlement. While both are known as important documentarists of the Balkan area of the time the younger Milton is appointed as the first film-documentarist in Balkan history.

It is also worth mentioning that in Bitola we visited a Museum of  Albanian alphabet, being that it is a place where for the first time in history Albanian language has been put in official signage, the last  bell-maker workshop in a street that still has the name of bell-makers, and a self-run brewery built next to the rail tracks.