Side Trips

The Village of Koprivshtitsa -- The most popular day trip from Sofia is Rila Monastery but an equally rewarding destination lies 110km (68 miles) east from Sofia (just over 100 min. by car): the architectural museum town Koprivshtitsa, one of Bulgaria's most beautiful villages, with almost 400 superb examples of the National Revival building style that swept through the country in the 19th century. Then populated with merchants and tax collectors who imported many of the artisans from Plovdiv to build homes that signified their wealth, tiny Koprivshtitsa also birthed a few of the key revolutionaries who, tired of the living under the corrupt Ottoman Empire, staged the April Uprising of 1876 -- a rebellion that was brutally squashed but signaled to the rest of Bulgaria, and the Russians, that the country was ready to liberate itself from the "Yoke of Oppression."