The two courtyards
Arcaded layers of the 17th and 19th centuries.
sMboro — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Reneman — CC BY 2.0 de · Ad Meskens — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Michael Desnoyelles — CC BY-SA 4.0
Both if you can, but they are far apart. **Rila** is the better known and is on the World Heritage list, and its effect is immediate and visual: arcades banded in black, white and red high in the mountains. It is larger and more crowded, and closer to Sofia, about two hours. **Bachkovo** is older, quieter and close to Plovdiv, half an hour away, and its historical value is higher for its eleventh-century paintings. If you are in Sofia, go to Rila; if you are in Plovdiv, go to Bachkovo — there is no need to turn either into a long trip from the wrong city.
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Bachkovo is **Bulgaria's second largest and second most important monastery after Rila**, standing in a narrow valley in the Rhodope mountains twenty-three kilometres south of Plovdiv. It was founded in **1083** by the brothers Gregory and Abasius Pakourianos, **Georgian** commanders in the service of the Byzantine empire — so the monastery was Georgian in its first centuries, in language and rite, before it became Bulgarian. That unexpected origin is visible in its oldest parts. What survives of the original building is the **ossuary** a short distance away, holding eleventh-century wall paintings of great importance. The main complex is of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries: two courtyards ringed with arcades, a main church with wall paintings, an old soot-blackened kitchen, and paintings by Zahari Zograf on an outer wall. The fourteenth-century wonder-working icon of the Virgin is what pilgrims come for. **Entry is free**, and the ossuary opens on limited hours.
Arcaded layers of the 17th and 19th centuries.
On the outer wall in the courtyard.
Bachkovo, Rhodope mountains