|
|
 |
Extract from the Elena Travel Guides:
Like nearby Kotel and Koprivshtitsa, the nineteenth-century National Revival crafts town of
ELENA
, 40km southeast of Trnovo and served by five daily buses, lay far enough away from the centres of Ottoman power for Bulgarian crafts and culture to flourish. The Turks used the town's population to guard the local mountain passes, giving them a measure of autonomy in return, so painters and woodcarvers of nineteenth-century Elena were able to decorate the churches of the surrounding countryside, and patriotic local merchants could finance the restoration of nearby monasteries like Kpinovo. Although Elena has not been renovated to the same e...
read the whole Elena Travel Guides...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|