Monasteries, Churches

The Troyan Monastery is the third largest monastery in Bulgaria. It is located in the northern part of the country and was founded no later than the end of the 16th century. It is situated on the banks of the Cherni Osam near Oreshak, a village 10 km from the town of Troyan in northern Bulgaria.
The main church of the monastery was reconstructed near the end of Ottoman rule during the Bulgarian National Revival period by a master-builder called Konstantin in 1835.

The ornate interior and exterior of the church were painted between 1847 and 1849 by Zahari Zograph, a popular Bulgarian painter of the time, who also painted the central church of the Rila Monastery, the largest monastery in Bulgaria. Many of the "moral and social experiments" of art at the time such as Doomsday and Wheel of Life were reproduced at Troyan. One highly controversial move by Zograph was to paint his image around one of the windows in the back of the church.
The iconostasis in the central church is a wood carving dating to 1839. The Troyan Monastery is also, since the 17th century, the home of one of the holiest icons in Bulgarian Orthodoxy, the Three-Handed Virgin.

The historical church in Batak
The name of the church is “St. Nedelya”. It was built in 1813 by two Bulgarian craftmen. It is one of the first Bulgarian churches built in the country during the Renaissance. It is a cruciform dome built of stone, about a meter and a half in the ground with a fence two meters high called “Kaleto”, probably not to attract the attention of the enslaver. The floor and the roof are covered with stone tiles. Thewindows and doors are crowned with stone bows.The church

was famous with its fresco and woodcut.
          During the April Uprising in 1876, the church was converted as a last fortress for the people of Batak in their fight for national freedom. During a period of three days the 2000 men, women and children gathered inside defending heroically their honour and freedom. To our days the well dug with bare hands by the mothers, so their children could get some water could be seen in the church. All defenders of the fortress die in a cruel way.
          Despite the attempts of the Ottoman soldiers to burn down the church, only the woodwork onside the church burns up. It was the only building wich survived in Batak after the brutal extinction of the April Uprising.
          Right after the liberation during 1878 the church “St. Nedelya” is converted into charnel house museum.

Aladzha monastery
Aladzha monastery is the most famous rock monastery on the Bulgarian Black sea coast, one of the numerous rock cloisters inhabited by monks during XIII – XIV century. These unique religious memorials are quite commonly seen on a vast area, including the Balkans and the Near East.
Located in a beautiful forest area 14 km away from Varna, the monastery has from a long

time arisen the interest of explorers and admirers.
Some 800 meters to the northwest, hidden in the thick vegetation, there is still another group of caves – the Catacombs, organazed on three levels.
There are no written evidences about Aladzha monastery and the other memorials. There are only legends telling about ruins, haunted by ghosts of monks, forest deities and infinite underground labyrinths hiding uncountable treasures and, perhaps, evidences for the past of this beautiful and mysterious place.