Aladja monastery description and photos - Bulgaria: Varna (Topic)

Aladja monastery description and photos - Bulgaria: Varna. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The name in English is Aladja monastery.

Photo and description

The Aladzha Monastery is a rocky Orthodox monastery located 15 kilometers from the city of Varna. In this area, in caves carved into a sheer limestone cliff, Christian hermits lived since the 4th century. In the XIII-XIV centuries, the monastery became one of the centers of the spiritual and moral teachings of hesychasm, whose followers professed severe asceticism and moral perfection. By the end of the XIV century, after the Ottoman conquest, the Aladzha monastery was destroyed, but its caves were inhabited by hermits until the 18th century.

The monastery complex includes: 20 cells and premises for household purposes, a kitchen, a crypt, a refectory , a church for a funeral service, two chapels and a katholikon (cathedral monastery church) of the Holy Trinity. The windows of the cells offer a magnificent view of the sea. Previously, the premises were decorated with frescoes, the remains of which visitors can observe in the monastery chapel (there are partly preserved wall paintings of the 13th-14th centuries, written on the New Testament theme of the Resurrection of Christ). The name of the monastery came from these murals (“aladzha” in Turkish means “colorful”).

All rooms are located in two tiers of caves of forty-meter rock. The total length of the hollowed-out premises is 500 meters.

There are many tales and legends among the Bulgarians associated with the Aladzha monastery. The most interesting of them tells the story of a lonely monk who sometimes appears in the vicinity of the rock and asks random travelers about how people live now. After receiving an answer, the monk closes his eyes and disappears. It is said that the mysterious monk will ask his questions as long as while the monastery and the ancient forest around it stand.

Today the monastery is not functioning and is part of the Varna Historical and Archaeological Museum and a cultural monument of national importance (since 1957).

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Topic: Aladja monastery description and photos - Bulgaria: Varna.