|
To the west of Tsarevets on both banks of the Yantra lies the Asenova quarter , where chickens strut and children fish beside the river. During the Middle Ages this was the artisans' quarter, which it remained until 1913, when it was struck by an earthquake which levelled most of the medieval buildings and did great damage to the (much reconstructed) churches. The Church of the Forty Martyrs ( Tsarkva nachetirideset machenitsi ; closed for long-term repairs), near the bridge is a barn-like edifice founded by Tsar Ivan Asen II to commemorate his victory over the Byzantine rulers of Epirus at Klokotnitsa on Forty Martyrs' Day in 1230. Subsequently much altered, to the extent that it has, apparently, baffled restorers, the church was the burial place of St Sava, founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and several Bulgarian tsars; the Bulgarians saw God's hand behind the collapse of the minaret built when the Turks impiously transformed this into a mosque. Among the pillars within stands Khan Omturag's Column, filched from another site, whose Greek inscription reads in part: "Man dies, even though he lives nobly, and another is born. Let the latest born, when he examines these records, remember him who made them. The name of the Prince is Omurtag, the Sublime Khan". Not to be outdone, Asen had another column inscribed with a list of his conquests from Adrianople to Durazzo (Durres in Albania), whose inhabitants were spared "by my benevolence". Further north, the early twentieth-century Church of the Dormition isn't intrinsically interesting, but stands on the site of the monastery of the Virgin of the Prisoners, where Tsar Ivan Aleksandar confined his wife as a nun in order to marry the Jewess Sara. The Church of SS Petar i Pavel (Easter-Sept unpredictable hours; free), 200m beyond, is more remarkable: it contains several capitals in the old Bulgarian style (carved with vineleaves in openwork) and some well-preserved frescos of which the oldest - dating back to the fourteenth century - is the Pieta opposite the altar. On the south wall, opposite the entrance, the church's saints' namesakes are portrayed in a lively manner. The church was the site of the massacre of the bolyari in 1393 (only Patriarch Evtimii's intervention dissuaded the Turks from killing the entire population) and, much later, the place where the Ottoman-appointed Greek patriarch of Bulgaria was evicted by the citizenry. On the other side of the river are two more restored churches. With its red-brick stripes and trefoil windows inlaid with orange plaques, the Church of Sveti Dimitar is the best looking of the surviving medieval churches, although most of its original frescos were painted over during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was during the consecration of the church that the bolyari Petar and Asen announced their rebellion against Byzantium, and Saint Demetrius (who, legend has it, came from Salonika to help the oppressed Bulgarians) became the patron saint of the Second Kingdom. The Church of Sveti Georgi , further to the south, is smaller but has better-preserved frescos of Orthodox saints. Overhead rises the massif known as Trapezitsa , where the bolyari and leading clergy of the Second Kingdom built their mansions and some forty private churches, sixteen of which are currently being excavated. It's an area of great archeological importance, and although tracks onto the hilltop do exist, interlopers are discouraged.
Your Tip for Asenova quarter
Help other backpackers! Write your own guides and backpacking tips to Asenova quarter - they will appear instantly on this page - Please only write a tip/guide to Asenova quarter - visit the main Asenova quarter forum to ask a question!
Please do not post links to your site here (they won't work) - please use the Asenova quarter webguide section below! Thanks.
|
