Madara Rider
Мадарски конник
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The relief itself is about 2.6 metres high and 3.1 metres wide at the base.
- It is regarded as the only early medieval rock relief of its kind in Europe.
- The traveller and scholar Felix Kanitz first described the relief for modern science in 1872.
- Scaffolding was raised to study the carving in 1895, 1905 and 1954, and a plaster cast was taken in 1905.
- An eagle with spread wings is carved to the right of the horse's head, part of a scene that once included a rider, lion, dog and bird.
- Khan Krum was once a favoured candidate for the rider's identity, but most scholars now reject that idea.
- A decorated gold belt from around 900 AD was found in a burial just west of the excavated building below the cliff.
- In 2008 a public vote named the rider a national symbol of Bulgaria.
Why it is worth it
On a sheer cliff face above the village of Madara in north-eastern Bulgaria, a horseman rides to the right, spearing a lion that lies beneath his horse's hooves while a dog runs behind him. The relief is almost life-size and is carved about 23 m above the ground into a near-vertical rock wall roughly 100 m high. Centuries of weather have worn away much of the detail, and the rider's halo, his clothing and a bird in front of his face are now hard to make out. It was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1979.
The carving is dated to the very end of the 7th or the early 8th century, the time of Khan Tervel, shortly after the Bulgars settled the region in 680–681. Around the image are inscriptions in medieval Greek. The oldest describes Tervel's dealings with the Byzantine emperor Justinian II, and later ones refer to the khans Krum and Omurtag. Who the rider is remains debated. Early scholars saw him as a version of the Thracian horseman, a Balkan deity; most now link the iconography, including the stirrup and the halo, to Bulgar steppe tradition, while the lion and the rightward movement echo older Thracian art. Candidates include the Bulgar deity Tangra and Tervel himself.
The relief is the centrepiece of the Madara National Historical and Archaeological Reserve, which layers almost every period of the region's past on one plateau. The reserve contains Neolithic and Eneolithic finds, a Thracian settlement, a Roman villa and fortress, and remains of a medieval Bulgarian palace and pagan sanctuaries. There are also early Christian churches, fortifications from the First Bulgarian Empire and a rock-cut cave monastery of the 12th to 14th centuries. Excavations below the relief uncovered a complex interpreted as a pagan shrine and ruler's residence, along with an inscription of Omurtag mentioning a sacrifice to Tangra.
For Bulgarians the rider is a national emblem. It appeared on coins in 1999 and 2000, won a 2008 public vote to decide the design of the country's future euro coins, and has been on Bulgarian euro coins since Bulgaria joined the eurozone in 2026.
Getting there
Madara village lies about 15 km east of Shumen, the nearest city, at the western foot of the Madara plateau. The reserve and the relief are about 1.5 km east of the village. The nearest international airport is Varna (VAR), about 58 km away by straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Madara Rider or Madara Horseman is a large early medieval rock relief carved on the Madara Plateau east of Shumen in northeastern Bulgaria, near the village of Madara. The monument is dated to the very late 7th or more often the very early 8th century, during the reign of the Bulgar Khan Tervel. In 1979, the monument was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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