Late Byzantine art
Among the finest surviving in the whole Balkans.
Hans A. Rosbach — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Hans A. Rosbach — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Hans A. Rosbach — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Hans A. Rosbach — CC BY-SA 3.0
A group of churches, chapels and monasteries carved into the limestone cliffs above the Rusenski Lom river valley, on the World Heritage list since 1979. Hermits began cutting their cells into the cliff in the thirteenth century, and the complex then expanded to about forty churches and chapels and three hundred chambers distributed across levels in the rock. The site declined after the Ottoman conquest and was gradually abandoned. What earns it the World Heritage listing is the wall painting: fourteenth-century frescoes in the Buried Church counted among the finest surviving late Byzantine art in the Balkans. Their manner is advanced for the period — bodies in movement, individual facial expressions and an early sense of perspective — and they were probably executed under royal patronage from the Asen dynasty. What is open to visitors today is one principal church, the rest closed for conservation or inaccessible. The approach is by steps from the car park.
Among the finest surviving in the whole Balkans.
Bodies in movement, individual faces and early perspective.
The original complex was far larger than what is visited today.
The Rusenski Lom river valley, near Ruse
For three reasons: the solitude asceticism requires; protection, since cells in a high cliff are hard to reach without ladders that can be drawn up; and economy, since no building materials are needed or transported. The tradition is old in the Christian East and spread from Egypt and Cappadocia into the Balkans. Bulgaria holds other similar sites, among them rock monasteries near Belogradchik and in the Ruse region itself.
The Rusenski Lom nature park surrounds the site, with walking trails along the river and cliffs nesting a large number of birds of prey — the area is known to birdwatchers. The city of Ruse on the Danube is close, among Bulgaria's handsomest with its early twentieth-century neo-baroque architecture, and called little Vienna. And the medieval fortress of Cherven is a short distance away.
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