Bozhenishki Urvich Fortress

En un regard

Le château en bref

At 750 metres above sea level on the wooded slopes of the western Balkan Mountains, three kilometres south of the village of Bozhenitsa and some twenty kilometres from Botevgrad, Bozhenishki Urvich was one of the last strongholds of Bulgarian resistance to the Ottomans. Fortified as early as the Proto-Byzantine period, the site reached its peak in the 13th and 14th centuries, when an outer enclosure was built to block the only northern access. At the end of the 14th century, it served as the headquarters of the boyar Ognyan, a loyal follower of Tsar Ivan Chichman: an inscription found in 1918 among the roots of a tree felled by a storm attests to his opposition to the Turks, and hundreds of arrowheads evoke the battle fought around 1395. A ten-metre cistern and a rock-cut chapel survive within the enclosure, reached by a short waymarked trail.