Chiprovtsi

Chiprovtsi in the north-west has woven flat kilims since at least the seventeenth century, worked by women on vertical looms in a technique that produces the same pattern on both faces, with designs built from geometric motifs that carry names, and the tradition was inscribed by UNESCO in 2014. The town was also a goldsmithing and mining centre with a Catholic community, unusual in Bulgaria, and it was destroyed after an uprising in 1688 and rebuilt. A museum covers the weaving and the town's history, workshops still produce carpets, and a monastery stands outside the town. The surrounding Balkan foothills are quiet and wooded, with the Chiprovtsi waterfall a short walk away.

History

The Ogosta valley has been lived in since the early 1st millennium BC, when Thracians, probably the Triballi, worked its metals, and the Romans, who took the region after 29 BC, guarded its gold, silver, lead, copper and iron mines with forts such as the Latin Fortress, where coins of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus have been found. Founded as a mining and metalworking town in the late Middle Ages, Chiprovtsi drew German miners, the Saxons, who brought Catholicism, and it became the cultural and religious centre of Bulgaria's Catholics until the uprising of 1688, after whose suppression many of its people fled to Habsburg lands (Wikipedia, Chiprovtsi).

Highlights

• Double-faced flat kilims - the same pattern on both sides of the weave.
• Named geometric motifs - the design vocabulary of the tradition.
• Vertical loom weaving - the technique still worked in the town.
• The town museum - the weaving, the mining and the 1688 uprising.

When to go

April to October. Half a day. The museum closes on some Mondays. Workshops keep working hours. It is remote and quiet at any time.

Practical notes

Working weavers are few and visits depend on arrangement. Carpets are expensive, reflecting the months of work. The town is remote with limited public transport and few facilities. The museum is small.

Nearby

Montana is south-east; the Serbian border lies west.