Tsarevets Fortress
Hilltop citadel of the medieval Bulgarian capital, with royal palace ruins and a patriarchal church.
Tsarevets was the principal stronghold of Veliko Tarnovo, capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire from 1185 until the Ottoman conquest of 1393. The hill is ringed by walls up to twelve metres high and three and a half metres thick, reached through three gateways along a narrow approach. Inside stood the royal palace, with a throne room and a palace church, and around 400 houses and eighteen churches, together with workshops and cisterns serving the court.
The Patriarchal Cathedral of the Holy Ascension crowns the summit. Rebuilt in the 1970s and 1980s on its medieval foundations, it was decorated in 1985 with modernist murals by Teofan Sokerov rather than conventional icon painting. Excavation of the hill began in the 1930s and continues; Baldwin's Tower at the south-east corner, a 1930 reconstruction, recalls the imprisonment of the Latin emperor Baldwin I of Constantinople. An evening sound-and-light show is staged over the hill on request and on public holidays.
Highlights
- Walls and three gateways guarding the medieval capital
- Patriarchal Cathedral with modernist murals by Teofan Sokerov
- Foundations of the royal palace and its throne room
- Baldwin's Tower and the sound-and-light show over the hill
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