Category: Bulgaria

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Rila Monastery, Bulgaria, 1997

Rich McClear

These pictures are faded.  We scanned them to put on this website.   March 1997 There are fine monasteries, isolated in the mountains, and of only passing interest to the Turks, so they remain.  We went to Rila.  It is a four story arcaded and fortified place with fine frescos that have the faces of donors to the monastery depicted as saints, and demons.  I don’t know if the placement has anything to do with the size of the donation.  While we happily spent hours in the monastery on one fine Sunday, it is the mountains rising around it that … Continue reading Rila Monastery, Bulgaria, 1997

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Rakoivishki Monastery, Bulgaria.

Rich McClear

This is from October 2011. We drove back to Serbia by back roads.  The main attraction was to be Belogradchik, an Ottoman fort built around a series of natural red rock monoliths.  In pictures they look spectacular, but we had fog down to the deck so I really can’t testify to them first hand.  Now I know how cruise ship passengers arriving in Sitka must feel.  We also visited the Rakovishki Monastery, which was a center for Bulgarian Nationalism against the Turks.  The Turks destroyed much of the monastery in 1850 but left one chapel from the 11th century unharmed.  … Continue reading Rakoivishki Monastery, Bulgaria.

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Sofia, Bulgaria

Rich McClear

My Friend Lili from Sofia asked where Bulgaria was in my blog.  Here are some Archive pictures from October 2011.  October 30, 2011 Sofia, Bulgaria Anyone who digs a few meters under Sofia’s the streets finds layers of history ranging from Neolithic to Ottoman with Roman, Byzantine and Medieval Bulgarian layered between.  In 2004 excavations started for the hotel in which we were staying, workers uncovered a Roman Amphitheater and they had to redesign the hotel to protect the ruins and incorporate them into the design, giving the hotel a striking atrium and one of the more unique health clubs … Continue reading Sofia, Bulgaria