Brashlyan

Brashlyan is a village of about seventy protected houses in the Strandzha forest near the Turkish border, built in a manner specific to this region: low single or two-storey buildings with white-rendered walls, timber upper floors and very heavy roofs of stone slabs, set among oak woodland along a stream. The church of Saint Demetrius is a half-sunken building of the seventeenth century with a wooden iconostasis and a small museum of icons, and there is a school building and an ethnographic house. The village emptied through the twentieth century, partly because the area was a closed border zone, which is why it survives unaltered, and it now has a small population and a few guesthouses.

What you actually see

• Heavy stone-slab roofs - the Strandzha roofing on low white houses.
• The half-sunken church - a seventeenth-century building with a wooden screen.
• Oak woodland around it - the Strandzha forest enclosing the village.
• A protected reserve - about seventy buildings under protection.

When to go

April to October. Half a day. The church and museum have limited hours and a keyholder may be needed. It is very quiet at almost any time.

Honest expectations

It is small and two hours covers it. Buildings are often locked and need a keyholder. Facilities are minimal. The roads through the Strandzha are slow and public transport is thin.

Nearby

Malko Tarnovo is south; Bulgari and its fire dancing lie east.