Boboshevo Bulgaria - Travel Guide, Tours, Hotels and Photos - Pictures of Bulgaria

The town of Boboshevo is situated 85km to the south of Sofia and just 4km away from the main road that connects Sofia to the Greek border. The town lies in the lowest part of the southwestern ridge of the Rila mountain, in the fertile valley of the Struma river.

Thanks to its favourable location and mild climate, the area of Boboshevo has been populated since antiquity. Here, in the neighbourhood of the Slatino village, an Eneolithic settlement with valuable objects of the early 5th millennium BC has been uncovered during excavations. In addition to more than 500 ceramic objects, qualified as true masterpieces of fine art, there is a unique finding of an oven model with a lunar calendar painted on its bottom. The calendar is the oldest of its kind found anywhere in Europe.

The Boboshevo region is known also as the Bulgarian Jerusalem due to its role of a cultural centre during the 15-17th c. The region is rich in churches and monasteries, most of which date back to that period. The most famous of these is the St Dimitar monastery, that lies in the lower eastern part of the Ruen mountain. The monastery was first built in the 10th c. After being destroyed during the Ottoman invasion in Bulgaria in the late 14th c., it was reconstructed in 1488. The monastery had hosted St Ivan Rilski during his early years of monkhood, before he moved to live as a hermit in a nearby cave and then founded the famous Rila monastery. In 2002-2003, patriotic Bulgarians built another monastery in the region. It is located in the neighbourhood of the village Skrino and is named after St Ivan Rilski for his being born in the same village. A steep path starts from the monastery and leads up in the mountains to the cave where St Ivan Rilski used to live.