River · North Macedonia
Vardar
Vardar is the longest river of North Macedonia, a country without a coast in south-east Europe. It starts in the western mountains and cuts through the middle of the land. Near Thessaloniki it reaches the sea.
Picture credit: mk:Корисник:Македонец (CC BY-SA 3.0) · kallerna (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Perdika (CC0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the Vardar?
The river starts here: mountains near Gostivar, western North Macedonia.
It ends in the Thermaic Gulf near Thessaloniki, Aegean Sea.
Countries on the river: North Macedonia.
The story behind it
The Vardar is the main artery of its country. Nearly every town, the railway and the motorway follow its valley, and the capital Skopje sits right on its banks, where an old stone bridge has carried people across for centuries. South of the city the river squeezes through narrow rock gates, then opens into warm plains where farmers grow grapes, peppers and tobacco with its water. A cold, strong wind called the Vardarec often blows down the valley in winter and can rattle windows for days. Turtles bask on the banks, and storks nest on poles above the fields. Where the river leaves the country its name changes: in Greece it is called the Axios, and because the two halves are measured separately, books do not always agree on how long it is.
Questions children ask
How long is the Vardar?
The Vardar measures about 388 kilometres in total. Around 312 of those kilometres lie in North Macedonia. The last part flows through Greece, where the river carries a different name.
Which country does the Vardar flow through?
The Vardar is counted here as the longest river of North Macedonia. It crosses the country from the north-west to the south-east. Beyond the border it continues through northern Greece to the coast.
Where does the Vardar flow into the sea?
The Vardar ends in the Thermaic Gulf near the Greek city of Thessaloniki. That gulf belongs to the Aegean Sea. Its delta is a flat land of fields, lagoons and marshes full of birds.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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