Skopje City

There will also no longer be any space for the gardens that surrounded the old buildings, or for the trees that used to grow there.

These trees were not only of sentimental value to old Skopje residents, or important for activists seeking more humane urban development.

Macedonian gay rights activists on Thursday laid a funeral wreath in front of the government headquarters to symbolically "bury" the embattled government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.

Slavco Dimitrov, one of the activists, told the protest meeting that the government routinely turned a blind eye to anti-gay violence.