CENTRAL BALKANS AREA
Top places to visit:
Tryavna
According the legend the settlement originated during the 12th century during the reign of Assen Dynasty. Tryavna has preserved its Revival appearance even today. The old part was proclaimed an architecture reserve with about 140 monuments of Revival period. The influence of the representatives Tryavna art School is strongly felt. Masons built beautiful houses, schools and churches. Icon painters ornamented them with icons and murals paintings and woodcarvers completed their work with unparalleled altars, ceilings and windows.
The village of Bozhentsi
Architecture and Ethnographic Reserve – almost all the buildings were built during the 18th in the typical of this region of Bulgaria Revival Style. In Bozhentsi one is carried away in the past and finds out an unsuspected idyll and calmness among the spiritually of the old houses. Every year in the beginning of September the village hosts a plain-air “Autumn in Bozhentsi”, and from June to September - an exhibition bazaar of works of art is held there, too.
The open air ethnographic museum “Etar”
was built in the middle of 20th century in the vicinity of the town of Gabrovo, an old industrial centre of Bulgaria. It was created to preserve for the coming generations the appearance and the spirit of the old time Bulgarian mountain villages and the manufacturing traditions of the region. The museum was built on the two sides of a small river and all the buildings and sites have their authentic appearance, the same as they had during the 19th century. The buildings are differentiated into three groups:
- 1. Workshops using simple machines moved by the running water of the river, most of them are unique and unknown in Europe.
- 2. The second group of buildings forms the trade and manufacture street (charshia). There are 15 examples of houses, where manufacturing workshops and small shops are situated on the first floor and the museum items are situated on the second floor.
- 3. The third group of buildings has public functions: a clock tower, bridges, stone water fountain and gravestones.
Elena
The town has preserved its ancient Revival appearance up to date. 130 buildings of that time are preserved, grouped in several ensembles. Most renowned are the Daskalolivnitsata /first teachers` training school in the country /, The Clock Tower of 1812, which counts every hour still today, etc.
Troyan Monastery
The Troyan Monastery, is known above all for the creative work of Zahari Zograph who painted both the exterior and the interior (a rare practice for the time) of the main church built in 1835, 7 km from the town of Troyan. It is a fine example of the impact of the popular conception of the world and the influence of housing architecture on religious construction. Here, Zahari Zograph repeated the social and moral in religious painting (the compositions Doomsday and the Wheel of Life), left his second self-portrait signed with amazing self confidence in spite of the Ottoman bondage, and painted the figures of Bulgarian and Russian saints. Besides, he painted a completely secular group portrait of the monastic brotherhood in the refectory - something highly unusual for the time.
National Fair – Crafts and Applied Arts in the village of Oreshak
Articles of the modern masters of art crafts and the applied arts are not only from Troyan and the region but from all over the country are exhibited in the numerous halls there. A part from the exposition is a bazaar, too.
Shipka Church
In the surroundings of the town of Shipka, on the southern slopes of the Balkan, Bulgarians have built the Birth of Christ Memorial Church in honour to the heroes of the Russian-Turkish war of Liberation of 1977 – 1878 – Russian soldiers and Bulgarian volunteers. Its gold plated domes and beautifully ornamented façade stand out against the mountain and attract the attention of all heading for the Shipka pass.
Interesting Events:
- International Folklore Festival in Koprivshtitsa, once in four years /next event in August 2014/