The ‘Krastova gora – Sveta Troitsa Monastery Complex (Crosses Forest - Holy Trinity) is located 40 km from the town of Asenovgrad and 6 km from the village of Borovo. The place started gaining popularity in mid-1990s. A new Church of the Shroud of the Mother of God and 12 chapels (dedicated to the 12 Apostles) have been built. The legend goes that a fraction of the Jesus Christ Cross is hidden here!

Bachkovo Monastery of the Dormition of the Theotokos is the second largest operating monastery in Bulgaria and also the most visited tourist site in the Rhodopes. In the following years after its creation in 1083, the monastery became a center of cultural flowering. Since times immemorial it had been a stronghold of the Bulgarian national sensibility. The monastery is the keeper of the "Wonderworking Icon" of the Mother of God, which each year, on the second day of Easter is taken to the Kluviyata, an area where a mass is celebrated and where thousands of believers congregate.

Temples in Chepelare

You will find great examples of the Bulgarian Renaissance church building in the Middle Rhodopes where first temples were built in 1834 - 1836. Two of them are the churches ‘St. Athanasius the Great’ and the ‘Dormition of the Mother of God’. Apart from being remarkable as buildings, they stand out with original wall-paintings, altars and icons. As they are open all year round and are easy to reach places, they are one of the top visited places. Four of the churches in the area have been declared artistic monuments of national cultural significance, the most interesting of them being the church of St. Athanasius the Great in Chepelare, erected in 1834 in just 40 days! Here in the courtyard, in 1841, was built the first monastic school in the area of Chepelare.