The name of the city in Macedonian is Resen (Ресен) and in Turkish Resne, while in Albanian it is known as Resnjë (definite form: Resnja).

Resen's history dates to the Roman Empire when the famous road Via Egnatia was built, passing through the city.

After the Battle of Klyuch, some of Samuil's soldiers, who were each blinded in one eye, settled in a village on the shore of Lake Prespa.

[4] Ahmed Niyazi Bey's most famous monument in Resen is the Saraj, a French-style estate he built.

[6] According to K. Andreadis (1910), the population of Resen was 5,000-6,000 consisting of 1,700-2,000 Muslims and 3,300-4,000 Christians with Bulgarians being the majority demographic element and some Greeks.

[6] As of the 2002 census, the town of Resen has 8,748 inhabitants and the ethnic composition was the following:[9] The mother tongues of the city's residents include the following: The religious composition of the city was the following: A sizable amount of the Macedonian population originates from the nearby villages of Podmočani, Bolno, Malovišta in addition to other villages from the Lake Ohrid area who settled in Resen during the middle of the 19th century.

[11] In the latter decades of the 20th century, some Albanian-speaking Muslim Romani from the villages of Krani and Nakolec have migrated to Resen.

Resen is home to Prespa's Ceramic Colony, established in the 1970s, which attracts renowned artists from all over the world.