In the cultural heritage of the city of Ohrid and general in our country, the Icon Gallery stands in a prominent and very important place. With its invaluable collection is among the most important world collections and is on the same level with the collections in Sinai, Athos and Moscow.
The building, which today houses the permanent exhibition of 37 magnificent icons, dates from the period between 1845 and 1850. and throughout history it had various purposes (sports hall, city library, headquarters of the Ohrid Theater and other needs of the local population), until 1981-1983 when it was reconstructed and renovated and assigned to the management of the National Museum Ohrid.
Its final outlook with microclimate and security conditions ended in 2000 - the jubilee year of Christianity.
The first exhibition of the icons from this collection was in 1961 in the outer porch of the church of the Holy Mother of God Peribleptos at the XII Byzantine Congress.
Since then, there has been almost no exhibition in the world of Byzantine art without some of the valuable icons from our priceless collection - Ljubljana, Paris, Tokyo, Sarajevo, Vatican, Rome, New York and many others.
The development of icon painting starting from the XI to XX century can be seen in the chronological representation.
Some of the icons are made from the great masters of the Ohrid workshops, some are gifts for the church from Constantinople and Thessaloniki or from famous church dignitaries, emphasizing the icons from the "Paleogeology Renaissance" and the processional double-sided icons.
The materials from which they are made of, are with high quality and all natural, and that requires additional care and conservation.
In addition to the permanent exhibition starting from the oldest icon of this area (St. Basil and St. Nicholas from 1045/50) and ending with icons from the first decades of the XX century, the Gallery is open to visit and the lower exhibition space, where are exhibited and frescoes-copies and other valuable artistic material that testify to the achievements of our ancestors.
