Kremikovtsi Monastery

The Kremikovtsi Monastery of Saint George (Bulgarian: Кремиковски манастир „Свети Георги“, Kremikovski manastir „Sveti Georgi“) is a Bulgarian Orthodox monastery near Kremikovtsi to the northeast of the Bulgarian capital Sofia. Founded during the Second Bulgarian Empire (12th–14th century) and re-established in 1493 by a local Bulgarian noble, the monastery includes two churches. Of these, the older medieval church is notable for its highly regarded 15th-century frescoes.

The Kremikovtsi Monastery lies on a hill 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) from the former village of Kremikovtsi, now an outlying neighbourhood of Sofia. Kremikovtsi is located just northeast of Sofia, at the foot of the Balkan Mountains. The monastery was founded during the Second Bulgarian Empire, perhaps in the mid-14th century on the order of Tsar Ivan Alexander (r. 1331–1371). With the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the end of the 14th century, the Kremikovtsi Monastery was destroyed in 1398.

The monastery was re-established in 1493 by the Bulgarian boyar Radivoy from Sofia and the metropolitan bishop of Sofia at the time, Kalevit. Radivoy's act constitutes direct evidence that the medieval Bulgarian aristocracy was retained to some extent during the early years of Ottoman rule. The monastery church was rebuilt from crushed stone as a single-nave church without a dome. Radivoy dedicated the church to his two perished children, Teodor and Dragana. Shortly after the church's reconstruction, its narthex was destroyed by an earthquake and rebuilt in 1503. The church suffered further damage (particularly to its south wall) during earthquakes which impacted the region of Sofia in the 16th and 17th century, and was repaired in 1611. An exonarthex was added in the 18th century.

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