Velingrad

Velingrad Велинград
Velingrad in mid-June 2008
Coat of arms
Velingrad Location of Velingrad
Coordinates: 42°1′N 24°0′E / 42.017°N 24.000°E / 42.017; 24.000
Country	Bulgaria
Province (Oblast)	Pazardzhik
Government
• Mayor	Ivan Lebanov
Area
• Total	124.955 km2 (48.245 sq mi)
Elevation	777 m (2,549 ft)
Population (December 2011)
• Total	22,500
• Density	180/km2 (470/sq mi)
Time zone	EET (UTC+2)
• Summer (DST)	EEST (UTC+3)
Postal Code	4600
Area code(s)	359
Website	Official website

Velingrad (Bulgarian: Велинград) is a town in Pazardzhik Province, Southern Bulgaria, located at the western end of Chepino Valley, part of the Rhodope Mountains. It is the administrative center of the homonymous Velingrad Municipality and one of the most popular Bulgarian balneological resorts. As of December 2009, the town has a population of 22,500 inhabitants.

The region was inhabited by the Slavs. According to Bulgarian academics, the Dragovichi tribe lived there. The Dragovichi accepted many Thracian customs, but gave them typical Slavic characteristics. Soon after the Bulgar invasion on the Balkans, the whole region was annexed to the First Bulgarian Empire by Malamir.

Velingrad was founded in 1948 after the unification between the villages Chepino, Ladzhene and Kamenitsa. Whereas Chepino and Kamenitsa are older settlements, Ladzhene was founded after 1878 by Bulgarian refugees from Macedonia, because their region remained under Ottoman rule after the Treaty of Berlin.

The town is named after Vela Peeva, a Bulgarian communist revolutionary, who gave up her life during World War II.

The Villa Raîna is a Néo-Renaissance villa in the city's area of Ldžene (Bulgarian: Лъдженe) and was designed in 1928 by a renowned pre-WWII Serbian architect Milutin Borisavljević (1889-1970). Initially, "Raina" was conceived as the summer house of the Belgrade based industrialist, Stojadin "Stole" Stevović (1888-1945), for the needs of the families Stevović and Vasilije Simić. The site selected was a hilltop just outside the city of Velingrad, locally called the "Acropolis". The design mainly reflected the values of French Renaissance architecture but with discreet decorative features in the then fashionable Art Deco style. The house was nationalized in 1946, and transformed into a sanatorium for the treatment of infectious diseases. In 1992 the Villa Raina was restituted to Stevović's heirs (families Krsmanović-Simić and Gillès de Pélichy). The summer house is today protected by law as a cultural and historical monument of regional importance.