In Classical antiquity Ohrid was a Greek colony called Lykhnidos. Standing on a crag, it became by the 2nd century BC a post on the Via Egnatia to Bitola and Greece. It was rebuilt by the Romans after a devastating earthquake in 518. Ohrid probably derives its name from Lykhnidos, via Slavic and Albanian. At the summit is the ruined fortress dating chiefly from the late 10th and early 11th centuries, when Ohrid was the capital of a Bulgarian tsar.

Among the churches in the town are St. Sophia's, with 11th–14th-century frescoes, and St. Clement's (1295), also with medieval frescoes uncovered in the 1950s. On a nearby hilltop is a quadrangular building, the Imaret, a Turkish mosque and inn, built on the foundations of the Monastery of St. Panteleimon (9th century), associated with St. Clement, the first Slav bishop of Ohrid. St. Clement opened the first Slavic school of higher learning, wrote the earliest works of Slavic literature, and, with St. Naum, translated the Scriptures from Greek into Slavonic. The 10th-century monastery of Sveti Naum (St. Naum), about 19 miles (31 km) south, crowns a prominent crag on the Macedonia-Albania frontier and overlooks Lake Ohrid. Pop. (1991 prelim.) mun., 65,531.