The Prime Minister of the Former Yugoslavia of Macedonia (FYROM) Nikola Gruevski has a love affair with Alexander the Great Statues. Now he has opened a new museum with waxworks of Alexander the Great, his father Philip II of Macedon and his mother Olympias.The museum that opened at the end of last month cost the FYROM’s Ministry of Culture a total of 27 million euros and has an area of square meters.

There are 15 wax figures of natural size in the museum that were manufactured in Russia. Apart from Alexander the Great’s family, they include Greek Byzantine Emperor Justinian and Perseus.

“All these new archaeological exhibits of the museum are priceless for our country and present a part of our cultural heritage, which reflects the particular traditions, knowledge and values of previous generations in this place,” said Mr. Gruevski when inaugurating the museum that has a copy of a marble sarcophagus of Sidon whose original is at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. The sarcophagus is known as that of Alexander the Great.

During the inauguration of the new museum, Mr. Gruevski said that plans were underway for the opening of a museum for Skopje’s refugees from the civil war period in Greece.

More building projects worth an ambitious 500 million euros are underway to give the city a Grecian makeover in the hopes of giving the country a boost as far as the long-running name dispute with Greece over the use of the name “Macedonia”. The country, where 30% of the population is unemployed and living beneath the poverty line, is being transformed with symbols and statues inspired by Ancient Greece.