The small town of Koprivshtitsa lies at some 110km away from Sofia in the heart of the Srtedna Gora mountain, which crosses the country horizontally in parallel to the Balkan mountain. The town is a true ethnographical museum of Bulgarian Renaissance architecture. Koprivshtitsa is also a living witness of Bulgaria’s struggle against the Ottoman rule due to its inhabitants’ active participation in plots, including the unsuccessful but heroic April uprising in 1976.
Koprivshtitsa’s charm and ancient spirit has hardly any rivals in Bulgaria, probably except for the seaside town of Sozopol. Yet the two towns’ similarities end with their narrow and steep cobbled streets. Koprivshtitsa’ old (but renovated) houses are all painted in different vivid colours (yellow, orange, red, blue, green) with their stone walls rising high above the ground. Walls were built thick and high for purely practical reasons - i.e. during the Ottoman rule, this was done in order to prevent Bulgarian women from being beheld and possibly hurt by Turkish soldiers. The walls’ height was also ensuring that any plots or revolutionary gatherings against the Turkish authorities were not to be heard or seen by the latter.
Once being a crafts and trading centre, at present the town of Koprishtitsa lives primarily on tourism with most of its houses being turned into cozy family hotels with welcoming mehanas and restaurants on their ground floors or in their cellars. Accommodation and pub prices are relatively cheap, while the atmosphere including the cuisine are traditionally Bulgarian. This makes the town a favourite weekend destination for guests of Sofia and Plovdiv (80km).
