Bulgaria Culture News - Bulgarian Aladzha Monastery in Fight for EU Money

Bulgarian history museum ‘Aladzha Monastery' (North - Eastern Bulgaria) will compete with projects for over 6 million BGN (3 million EUR).
The tourism interest towards the monastery is huge - only last year The Aladzha was visited by more than 70,000 tourists.
The money will be used mainly for fight with the humidity, which is the main enemy there.
First of all must be created a strategy for culture tourism - the popular making converts the resorts in an industry, like in all highly developed countries.
Bulgaria is still not there especially if we judge by the quality of local tour operators and guides, the manager of Aladzha Monastery Valeri Kinov commented.
What has been going on now is chalga (popfolk) tourism, Kinov stated.
As a counteraction the manager and the philosopher Stancho Stanchev are considering to revive the old practices of meditation and self-digging.
Stanchev already works over multimedia system with information about the rock monasteries and many legends for Aladzha Monastery and its monks.
Learn more about Aladzha Monastery:
Aladzha Monastery is a medieval Orthodox Christian cave monastery complex in North - Eastern Bulgaria, 17 km North of central Varna and 3 km West of Golden Sands beach resort, in a protected forest area adjacent to the Golden Sands Nature Park.
The monastery caves were hewn into a 25-m high vertical carst cliff near the upper edge of the Frangen plateau on several levels.
The complex also includes two small nearby catacombs.
Dedicated to the Holy Trinity, it was an active hesychast monastic community of the Second Bulgarian Empire since the 12th century and perhaps survived until the early 18th century.
As late as the early 20th century, the forested hills surrounding the monastery and known as Hachuka (Mount of the Cross) or Latin, were regarded by the locals as sacred and inhabited by a mythical chthonic daemon and treasure keeper, Imri Pop or Rim-Papa [1].
Today, the grotto is a popular tourist destination. Its present name appeared in the late Ottoman period; Alaca referred to its colourful murals.
 

by Blaga Bangieva