Rakovski (town)

Rakovski Раковски
The Roman Catholic church in the Parchevich neighbourhood
Rakovski Location of Rakovski
Coordinates: 42°18′N 24°58′E / 42.300°N 24.967°E / 42.300; 24.967Coordinates: 42°18′N 24°58′E / 42.300°N 24.967°E / 42.300; 24.967
Country	Bulgaria
Province (Oblast)	Plovdiv
Government
• Mayor	Franz Kokov
Elevation	180 m (590 ft)
Population (2006-09-15)
• City	17,253
• Urban	26,937
Time zone	EET (UTC+2)
• Summer (DST)	EEST (UTC+3)
Postal Code	4150
Area code(s)	03151

Rakovski (Bulgarian: Раковски) is a town in southern Bulgaria, in the historical region of Thrace. It is located in the Plovdiv Province. The town is also the centre of the Rakovski Municipality. Rakovski was founded in 1966 with the merging of three villages — General Nikolaevo, Sekirovo and Parchevich. The new town was named after the prominent Bulgarian revolutionary Georgi Sava Rakovski.

The town is located in the western part of the Upper Thracian Lowland, at 25 km to the northeast of Bulgaria's second largest city Plovdiv, and has an area of 5,50 km². Rakovski is located in a transitional continental climatic zone south of Stara Planina. The summers are hot and dry and the winters are mild, with snow remaining for about a month.

Traces of human population in the area date back since the Chalcolithic. There are remains of an ancient settlement and a Roman road at 2 km to the southeast of the town.

The area was settled by Paulicians in the Middle Ages, who served as frontier guards and heavily armed infantry in the battles between the Byzantine Empire and Bulgaria between the 9th and the 14th century. Most of them fled to Nikopol on the Danube, the Second Bulgarian Empire's last stronghold, after fierce fights with the Ottomans in the end of the 14th century. There they accepted Roman Catholicism from Chiprovtsi missionaries and gradually returned to their native places. The different confession did not, however, affect the local residents' patriotic feelings, as many took part in the Bulgarian National Revival.