Gabrovo

The people of Gabrovo are proverbially frugal in Bulgaria – and they have turned that reputation into a brand of their own. A trip to Gabrovo leads you to a small province on the northern slope of the Balkans, where humor, craftsmanship, and the history of the National Revival lie close together.

Gabrovo and the Etar Open-Air Museum

The city stretches out along the Yantra River and was a center of textile and leather crafts in the 19th century, which is why it was often called the Bulgarian Manchester. The country's first secular school was founded here in 1835. The House of Humor and Satire displays cartoons and jokes from around the world, and in May a colorful carnival parade winds through the streets. On the outskirts of town lies Etar, an ethnographic open-air museum with water mills, fulling mills, and a craftsmen's street where coppersmiths, potters, and confectioners work. Not far away stands Sokolski Monastery, and a road winds in serpentines up to the Shipka Pass on the Balkan ridge.

Tryavna and Sevlievo

Tryavna is a small town of woodcarvers and icon painters. Around the square with the clock tower stand houses with carved ceilings; in the Daskalov House, two masters competed to create the most beautiful sun-motif ceiling. A museum shows the work of the Tryavna School. Sevlievo, on the Rositsa River, is an industrial town with a pretty old quarter and the Alexander Stamboliyski Reservoir nearby. In the south of the province, Central Balkan National Park stretches out with beech forests and mountain huts. Other destinations include the museum village of Bozhentsi in the mountains near Gabrovo and Dryanovo Monastery, close to Bacho Kiro Cave, where traces of early modern humans have been found. For kids, the Interactive Museum of Industry in Gabrovo is worth a visit, vividly telling the story of the city's factory history.

Food, Getting There, and the Best Time to Visit

The cuisine is rustic: beans baked in a clay pot, potatoes with sirene cheese, plum rakia. Gabrovo lies on the road from Veliko Tarnovo to the Shipka Pass, and Tryavna is on the railway line from Gorna Oryahovitsa to Stara Zagora. The best time to visit is May through October; in May the carnival is the big draw, and in autumn the forests change color.