Dolna Bela Crkva
Dolna Bela Crkva (Macedonian: Долна Бела Црвка, meaning Lower White Church; Albanian: Bollocërkë e Poshtme) is a village in the Resen Municipality of North Macedonia, north of Lake Prespa. The village, located roughly 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) from the municipal centre of Resen, has 237 residents.
Demographics
Dolna Bela Crkva has an Orthodox ethnic Macedonian majority, with a significant Muslim Albanian Sunni and Bektashi minority, of whom the latter are known locally as Kolonjarë. Sunni Albanians in Dolna Bela Crkva traditionally highlighted their religious identity over a linguistic one having closer economic and social relations with Turks and Macedonian Muslims in the region and being distant from Orthodox Macedonians. Over time these differences have disappeared through intermarriage, closer communal and cultural relations with Bektashi and other Sunni Prespa Albanian communities in the region.
As of the 2021 census, Dolna Bela Crkva had 179 residents.
Ethnic group |
census 1961 | census 1971 | census 1981 | census 1991 | census 1994 | census 2002 | census 2021 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | |
Macedonians | 222 | 65.1 | 230 | 56.9 | 259 | 64.8 | 215 | 70.7 | 167 | 67.1 | 156 | 65.8 | 117 | 65.4 |
Albanians | 119 | 34.9 | 173 | 42.8 | 138 | 34.5 | 82 | 27.0 | 82 | 32.9 | 81 | 34.2 | 56 | 31.3 |
others | 0 | 0.0 | 1 | 0.3 | 3 | 0.8 | 7 | 2.3 | 0 | 0.0 | 0 | 0.0 | 0 | 0.0 |
Persons for whom data are taken from administrative sources | 6 | 3.4 | ||||||||||||
Total | 341 | 404 | 400 | 304 | 249 | 237 | 179 |
Gallery
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Sign on main road hailing entrance into Dolna Bela Crkva
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Architecture of Dolna Bela Crkva
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Dolna Bela Crkva village centre
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Contemporary (left) and traditional (right) architecture of Dolna Bela Crkva
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Streetscape in part of Dolna Bela Crkva
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Orthodox church of Dolna Bela Crkva
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Old village well (built 1888)
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Cut firewood in a field of Dolna Bela Crkva
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Fields of Dolna Bela Crkva
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Apple orchard in Dolna Bela Crkva
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Dolna Bela Crkva river
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Fields of Dolna Bela Crkva
References
- ^ "Dolna Bela Crkva". Retrieved 24 August 2013.
- ^ "Municipality of Resen". Archived from the original on 2018-08-31. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
- ^ Censuses of population 1948 - 2002 Archived October 14, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Sugarman, Jane (1997). Engendering song: Singing and subjectivity at Prespa Albanian weddings. University of Chicago Press. pp. 9–11. ISBN 9780226779720.
- ^ Total resident population of the Republic of North Macedonia by ethnic affiliation, by settlement, Census 2021