Monastery of Saint John of Rila

This monastery takes its name from Ivan of Rila, a 10th-century hermit who — by one account, in protest at corruption he saw within the church of his time — withdrew into the mountains to live alone. He spent his final five years in a cave that still exists near the present complex, and after his death his followers built a small stone church beside it; that church still stands, older than everything else on the site, with the wider monastery gradually growing up around it under Tsar Peter I.

Almost none of that early growth survived a single night in January 1833, when a fire tore through the timber-built residential quarters and destroyed nearly the entire medieval complex. The one structure left standing was the Hrelyo Tower, a 23-metre stone keep raised in 1335 for the local feudal lord Hrelyo Dragovol — its fifth-floor chapel still holds fragments of frescoes painted in the 1330s, the oldest paintings anywhere on the site.

What visitors see today, with its arcaded courtyard and painted galleries, was rebuilt between 1834 and 1862 using donations gathered from Bulgarians across the country — at a time when, under Ottoman rule, monasteries like this one were among the few institutions actively keeping Bulgarian language, art and identity alive. That's the reason it's still called "Bulgaria's treasure" rather than just an old monastery.

Getting there

24 km from Dupnitsa. Sofia Airport (SOF) is about 63 km away.