Lying at 638 metres above sea level it is located on the southeastern side of the mountain Šar Planina.

The monastery dormitories were redecorated from around 1818 and the library was founded and Lešok became a literature and educational center.

In the yard of the Monastery of Lešok is the tomb of the Bulgarian cleric, writer and enlightener Kiril Peychinovich, who was born in 1770.

On August 13, during the 2001 Macedonian Insurgency, shortly after the Ohrid Agreement, the monastery was destroyed by an explosive device.

The corpse of a donkey painted with the letters UÇK (The Albanian abbreviation for National Liberation Army) were found next to the rubble though NLA forces within the town had claimed not to have been responsible nor to have been responsible and instead blamed local Macedonians from the town of Rate.