The Lopushanski Monastery – Bulgaria

Hello friends ! I want to present you my photos from the Lopushanski Monastery in Bulgaria.The Lopushanski Monastery of Saint John the Forerunner is a Bulgarian Orthodox monastery in northwestern Bulgaria. The original monastery was probably established during the Second Bulgarian Empire (XII–XIV centuries). The monastery had to endure torching and plundering raids in the 14th–18th centuries, the period of the early Ottoman rule of Bulgaria. In the following decades, the support of the nearby Chiprovtsi Monastery meant that the Lopushanski Monastery consolidated financially. In the 1840s, Archimandrite Dionysius and the hieromonks Gerasimus and Gideon of the Chiprovtsi Monastery joined the Lopushna Monastery, Dionysius as its hegumen (abbot). Having collected funds, the clerics sought to reconstruct the ill-maintained monastery buildings. In 1853 master Lilo together with graduate Slavin Tsaribrod build today’s impressicve church of the monastery the using very similar architectural style of Rila Monastery church. Along with the resumption of activity in 1853, Lopushanski monastery became a significant spiritual hearth. At that time, the monastery’s abbot, the monk Dionysius found a school for free education for children of poor parents from the surrounding area. Architecturally, the Lopoushna church resembles that of the Rila Monastery and is the work of a master Lilo. It is a three-nave, three-apse building with two conches and two side chapels ("Saints Cosmas and Damian" and "St. John the Baptist"). There are three central domes and two above the side chapels, all located on high of eight- walls drums. In the stone construction of the church are carved reliefs with figures of men, animals and individual heads. In the courtyard of the monastery can be seen the constructed in 1856 white stone fountain with three spouts. The altitude near the Lopushanski monastery is of 260 meters. And the climate around is known to be extremely beneficial in the treatment of lung diseases, and musculoskeletal.