Greetings, curious and thirsty travelers!
I suppose when you read the word "monastery", if you have traveled around Europe, your mind pictures you a big, bricks or stones, man-built structure with towers, bells, altars and crosses.
Aladzha Monastery, located just a few kilometers North from Varna, the biggest city on Black Sea in Bulgaria, is definitely NOT that kind of monastery! :)
Yes, typical for Bulgaria, that is an Orthodox Christian establishment.
What makes it unique though, is that is it cut in white sediment cliffs, based on a few small caves.
Also, this religious cave complex is just a couple of clicks away from the famous Bulgarian sea resort, called "Golden Sands". This proximity turned the monastery into quite a famous tourist destination, both locally and internationally.
Gladly, as my first visit was with a small group of friends, during a business day outside the active tourist season, that's the summer, there were virtually no other visitors and it was quiet and calm there. The weather was perfect as well.
So entering the monastery area that was the first thing I saw:
Let me just mention that you have to buy a ticket to visit the place. It wasn't expensive, I think the entrance ticket costed about two euro at the time of my first visit.
The caves contained quite artistic murals, pieces of art that had been actually removed and placed inside an air-conditioned museum, that is very close to the entrance. It was not allowed to take photographs there, so if you want to learn more about that and see photos of some of those ancient murals, that are mosaics, scroll down to the end of my travel story, where I have put a link to an external source.
Interesting light shows are placed here in the dry and warm summer nights for a limited number of tourists:
And if you inspect closer the upper part of that photo, you will see that those monks were very clever and they definitely had loved the beauty in Nature, as there, above the top of the trees, the sea could be seen.
Yeah, you know the fine aroma of the air by the sea. Well, the air is the same there, at the top levels of the cave monastery. Wonderful feeling!
Here is one of the altars, dug in the cliffs. With icon of saints and thousands of coins, left there by the visitors.
The tradition says that if you leave a coin, and wish for something good, it will happen. People mostly wish for their relatives and friends, and of course, for themselves, to be heathy and to be prosperous, to be happy and to be blessed.
I saw lots of Bulgarian and Romanian coins there, as Romania is relatively close, the national border is less than 80 kilometers away from the monastery!
My friends were enchanted by this whole establishment and we could feel its holiness. I couldn't imagine how hard it was to dig all those chambers in the cliffs! Not to mention it is very dangerous, considering the height of it all.
Here is another chamber and thanks to the paintings and the extra info on the walls, I could comprehend the purpose of all the corners I have visited there.
A long place to prey with sitting slots.
Some of the wall were so smoothly cut that it is almost unbelievable this had been done all manually, several centuries ago!
Sometimes it looked to me like a labyrinth.
Another scenery view from inside out, from another level.
In the middle ages, the monks had used wooden step-ladders that had been pulled up during attacks and the monastery had been practically absolutely immune against any attacks.
In the present days, there is a huge metallic staircase, here is the view from it:
At the monastery I saw multiple small bays in the walls where people leave more coins, again, wishing for better.
The monastery is actually quite long, it cannot be "presented" in just one photo, as the trees manage to hide it pretty well too ;)
I suppose you have already seen that on some of the photos I shared with you, everywhere, on all the floors, there are protective metallic fences, so in the present days it is not dangerous to go up and explore all the levels of that amazing monastery. Those fences have design that matches everything around, well done..
Back down to "earth", taking some short rest and preparing for the next discovery...
So if the visitor was eager to first see the cave chambers and feel the energy of the monastery, now perhaps, at the end, it is a good moment to go visit that museum. Ah, there was a gift shop inside it too with some items you won't find anywhere else! Some sweet treats as well, you'll see! :)
Here is the link that I promised to provide above, with a few photos of the mosaics found originally at the cave monastery, along with some interesting historical info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladzha_Monastery
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