Sveti Naum / Tushemisht: the Southern Way Into Albania

Sveti Naum / Tushemisht is the lake-shore crossing at the southern tip of Lake Ohrid, one of five listed points on the 186.1 km Albania–North Macedonia border, joining Ohrid municipality to Pogradec municipality on the SH64 and P-501 roads. OpenStreetMap's driving profile puts the post about 32.9 kilometres south of Ohrid; Pogradec lies roughly 5 km beyond it.

Most people meet this frontier by accident. They drive down the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid for the Monastery of Saint Naum, walk the grounds, and then notice that the road does not stop there — it runs on the last short distance to a checkpoint, and past the checkpoint is Albania. That checkpoint is the Tushemisht / Sveti Naum crossing, and it is the reason a morning at the monastery can turn into a full lap of the lake.

Worth knowing before you set out: this is not the crossing the corridor traffic uses. The through-route between Tirana and Skopje goes over Qafë Thanë, up on the Struga side, where a purpose-built expressway spur feeds a European route. The southern line is shore road on both sides. What it gives up in capacity it makes back in what stands either side of it, which in the plainest terms is the same World Heritage property twice.

At the border

Administratively the post joins two municipalities rather than two towns: Ohrid on the North Macedonian side, Pogradec on the Albanian one. The border-crossing table gives the road as SH64 in Albania and P-501 in North Macedonia. OpenStreetMap files the Macedonian checkpoint under a different regional number again — R1301 — and places it at 40.9114° N, 20.7372° E inside the village of Ljubaništa, which is worth holding in mind when a satnav's road labels and a roadside sign disagree with each other.

Four other points are listed on the same frontier: Bllatë e Sipërme / Blato and Trebisht / Džepište behind Debar, Qafë Thanë / Kjafasan above Struga, and Goricë / Stenje over on Lake Prespa. Between them they serve an Albania–North Macedonia border of 186.1 kilometres. Only one of the five is built for volume. The Qafë Thanë / Kjafasan crossing carries European route E852 and the A2, and Albania's SH9, an expressway spur 3.2 kilometres long, exists for no other purpose than to feed it. Nothing on the southern line is built to that standard, and nothing needs to be.

Places along the way

What makes this particular barrier unusual is that the UNESCO listing does not stop at it. Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Ohrid region was inscribed in 1979 under criteria (i), (iii), (iv) and (vii), given a significant boundary modification in 1980, and modified again in 2019 to take in the Albanian side of the lake. The property now measures 94,728.6 hectares with a buffer zone of 15,944.4 hectares, and the Albanian component was registered under the reference 99quater, in Korçë County.

The practical consequence is that the drive is not out of a World Heritage site into ordinary country. It runs from one component of a transboundary property into the other. Behind you on the Macedonian side the Monastery of Saint Naum, established in 905, stands 29 kilometres south of Ohrid in Ljubaništa. Ahead of you the citation names the historic centre of Pogradec as an example of 19th- and 20th-century Albanian vernacular architecture, and the Lin peninsula church — the remains of an Early Christian foundation of the mid-6th century, whose floor mosaics are the reason Lin village is on the list at all.

The route

From Ohrid town centre the OpenStreetMap driving profile measures about 32.9 kilometres to the checkpoint and just under an hour. That is an average close to 33 km/h, and it describes the shape of the road rather than its surface. The whole run is eastern-shore road beneath the Galičica massif, threaded through lakeside villages where a national road number is painted on what is in practice a residential street. There is no quicker line to draw: the mountain stands on one flank and the water on the other for the entire distance, and Galičica National Park sits over the top of it.

Past the barrier the distances collapse. Pogradec lies about 5 kilometres from the North Macedonian border on a narrow plain between two mountain chains at 735 metres above sea level, and from there Korçë is 40 kilometres and Tirana 139. Turn north along the Albanian shore instead and Lin village is roughly 22 kilometres from Pogradec and about 10 kilometres south of Struga, which is how the two crossings on this lake close into a circuit rather than two separate out-and-back drives.

Practical details

Two things are worth settling before you plan a journey around this post, and the first is that routing engines do not reliably know it exists. Ask the public OSRM demo server for a car route from the checkpoint to Pogradec — five or six kilometres of shore road — and it returns 83.4 kilometres, having sent the car back up the Macedonian side, over Qafë Thanë and down the Albanian one. Treat any arrival time an app gives you for a trip through this crossing as unreliable until you have checked which of the two crossings it actually chose.

The second is that this page states no border formalities, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight. Entry conditions for Albania and North Macedonia — travel documents, vehicle papers, insurance, and which of them applies to which nationality — are set by the two governments and revised without notice. A rule published here would go stale quietly and be believed anyway. Check your own foreign ministry's current travel advice and the two consular services for the dates you intend to travel, and confirm anything unusual about your vehicle before you are at the barrier rather than after.

What you see along the way

Tushemisht is a small lakeside village in Korçë County, part of Pogradec municipality since the 2015 local-government reform and part of Buçimas before it. Beside it are the Drilon springs, the water sources and swan park listed among the cultural monuments of the Pogradec area and the first thing most drivers stop for after clearing the barrier. The village holds an odd double claim on Albanian cultural memory: it was the main filming location for the romantic comedy Zonja nga qyteti, and it was the birthplace, on 23 April 1872, of the linguist Gjergj Pekmezi.

Pekmezi earns the detour into a footnote. He published Grammatik der albanesischen Sprache in Vienna in 1908, founded the cultural society Dija in 1904, sat on the Albanian Literary Commission that settled written Albanian in 1916, and taught the language at the University of Vienna until his death in 1938; the university's Albanology branch still carries his name. He was born a short walk from a frontier that did not yet exist, and that would not settle into its present line until the Sveti Naum area passed from Albania to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 28 June 1925, when President Ahmed Zogu ceded it.

Nearby

Pogradec has been written about for longer than most towns on this shore. The Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi passed through in 1662 and recorded four neighbourhoods, four mosques, two elementary schools, six hundred houses and one hundred and fifty shops. The second Albanian-language school in the country opened here on 14 March 1887. The 2023 census counted 17,371 residents in the municipal unit and 46,070 across the municipality, which makes it the largest settlement anywhere on the Albanian side of the lake and the natural base for anyone working this end of it.

Two other things sit within easy reach of the crossing without committing to a long day out. The Illyrian Royal Tombs at Proptisht, in the adjacent municipal unit, are on Albania's tentative list for World Heritage inscription. And the railway that once reached Pogradec is now cut — trains finish at Elbasan and parts of the line beyond that are derelict — which is the short answer to why every practical route across this frontier, for a visitor or for a tour group, is a road route.

At a glance

Crossing point: Tushemisht (Pogradec municipality, Albania) / Sveti Naum (Ohrid municipality, North Macedonia), listed on the SH64 and P-501 roads (Wikipedia, Albania–North Macedonia border, checked 2026-09)
The frontier it sits on: 186.1 km with five listed crossing points: Bllatë e Sipërme/Blato, Trebisht/Džepište, Qafë Thanë/Kjafasan, Tushemisht/Sveti Naum and Goricë/Stenje (Wikipedia, Albania–North Macedonia border (citing the Macedonian Border Police), checked 2026-09)
Road distance from Ohrid: About 32.9 km and just under an hour, Ohrid town centre to the checkpoint, on the eastern shore road (OpenStreetMap driving route measured on the OSRM demo server (router.project-osrm.org), checked 2026-09)
Where the checkpoint is recorded: 40.9114° N, 20.7372° E on road R1301 at Sveti Naum, in the village of Ljubaništa, Ohrid municipality (OpenStreetMap via Nominatim (nominatim.openstreetmap.org), checked 2026-09)
World Heritage status: Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Ohrid region, inscribed 1979 under criteria (i), (iii), (iv) and (vii), modified 1980 and again in 2019 to take in the Albanian side; 94,728.6 ha with a 15,944.4 ha buffer zone (UNESCO World Heritage List, Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Ohrid region (whc.unesco.org/en/list/99), checked 2026-09)
The Albanian component: Added in 2019 under the reference 99quater in Korçë County, taking in the historic centre of Pogradec and the ruins of the paleo-Christian church at Lin (Wikipedia, List of World Heritage Sites in Albania, checked 2026-09)
First town on the Albanian side: Pogradec, 735 m above sea level, about 5 km from the North Macedonian border, 40 km from Korçë and 139 km from Tirana; 17,371 in the municipal unit and 46,070 in the municipality at the 2023 census (Wikipedia, Pogradec, checked 2026-09)
Last landmark on the Macedonian side: The Monastery of Saint Naum, established 905, standing 29 km south of the city of Ohrid within the village of Ljubaništa (Wikipedia, Monastery of Saint Naum, checked 2026-09)
The alternative crossing: Qafë Thanë / Kjafasan, joining Prrenjas to Struga on European route E852 and the A2, fed on the Albanian side by SH9, an expressway 3.2 km long (Wikipedia, Albania–North Macedonia border, and Wikipedia, Roads in Albania, both checked 2026-09)
How the lake is shared: 64% of Lake Ohrid's shoreline and 69% of its surface lie in North Macedonia; 36% of the shoreline and 31% of the surface lie in Albania (Wikipedia, Lake Ohrid, checked 2026-09)
Sovereignty over the Sveti Naum ground: Albanian from 1912 until 28 June 1925, when President Ahmed Zogu ceded the area to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Wikipedia, Monastery of Saint Naum, checked 2026-09)

Good to know

Tushemisht was the birthplace, on 23 April 1872, of the linguist Gjergj Pekmezi, whose Grammatik der albanesischen Sprache appeared in Vienna in 1908 and whose name the University of Vienna's Albanology branch still carries.
The 2019 extension of the Ohrid World Heritage property onto the Albanian shore was registered under the reference 99quater and takes in the historic centre of Pogradec as an example of 19th- and 20th-century Albanian vernacular architecture.
The public OSRM routing graph will not send a car through the Sveti Naum crossing at all: asked to route from the checkpoint to Pogradec, it returns 83.4 kilometres the long way round Lake Ohrid rather than the few kilometres of shore road.
Albania's SH9, an expressway spur 3.2 kilometres long, exists to feed the Qafë Thanë crossing, while the Sveti Naum line is carried by SH64 on the Albanian side and P-501 on the North Macedonian side.
OpenStreetMap records the Macedonian checkpoint at Sveti Naum on road R1301 at 40.9114° N, 20.7372° E, inside the village of Ljubaništa.
The Albanian village of Tushemisht was the main filming location for the romantic comedy Zonja nga qyteti.

Frequently asked questions

Can you cross into Albania at Sveti Naum?

Yes. The Tushemisht / Sveti Naum crossing sits at the southern end of Lake Ohrid, a short distance past the monastery, and is one of five listed points on the 186.1-kilometre Albania–North Macedonia border. It joins Ohrid municipality to Pogradec municipality.

How far is the Sveti Naum border crossing from Ohrid?

OpenStreetMap's driving profile measures about 32.9 kilometres from Ohrid town centre to the checkpoint, and just under an hour, because the whole route is shore road beneath the Galičica massif. The Monastery of Saint Naum, 29 kilometres south of Ohrid, is the last landmark before it.

Should I use Sveti Naum or Qafë Thanë to reach Albania?

Qafë Thanë / Kjafasan is the corridor crossing: it carries European route E852 and the A2, and Albania built the 3.2-kilometre SH9 expressway to feed it. Sveti Naum is the southern shore route, and the better choice when Pogradec, Korçë or the lake itself is where you are heading.

Why does my satnav route me the long way round Lake Ohrid?

Because several routing graphs do not carry this crossing. The public OSRM demo server, asked for a car route from the checkpoint to Pogradec, returns 83.4 kilometres back over Qafë Thanë instead of the few kilometres of shore road. Check which crossing an app has picked before you trust its arrival time.

What is there to see on the Albanian side of the Sveti Naum crossing?

Tushemisht village and the Drilon springs with their swan park lie immediately beyond the border, and Pogradec is about five kilometres on. Its historic centre is named in the UNESCO citation as an example of 19th- and 20th-century Albanian vernacular architecture.

Is the Sveti Naum crossing inside a UNESCO World Heritage site?

The property continues on both sides of it. Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Ohrid region was inscribed in 1979, modified in 1980, and extended in 2019 onto the Albanian shore under the reference 99quater, covering 94,728.6 hectares with a 15,944.4-hectare buffer zone.

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Last reviewed: 2026-09-01