Dragalevtsi Monastery

The Dragalewzi Monastery ( Bulgarian Драгалевски манастир ) is a monastery of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and is located on the northern foothills of Vitosha Mountain near Dragalewzi, a neighborhood of the Bulgarian capital Sofia. It is dedicated to the Holy Mother of God.

It is believed that the monastery was founded in 1345 by the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Alexander. Here, the monastery was directly subordinated to the Bulgarian Patriarch. For the first time the monastery was first mentioned in 1371 in the Vitosha certificate, which was issued on behalf of the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Schischman as Tsar monastery. The monastery grew in the aftermath of a complex consisting of the monastery church, residential and commercial buildings.

After the capture of Sofia by the Ottoman Turks in 1382, the monastery was destroyed. Only in the second half of the 15th century, it was rebuilt, but then quickly evolved into a writing center of Bulgarian culture. Today, from the complex, only the monastery church received.

Abbey

The monastery church is a nave, einapsisigen 5 x 12 m building with a ring of chapels dar. Stylistically it is together with the other churches to Sofia, which originated in the 15th century, as seen in a group: the monastic churches of the monasteries Kremikovtsi and Karlukowo, the Sofia church Sveta Petka Samardschijska, the church Sveta Petka in Balscha and other churches in the Struma valley. The oldest frescoes of the church date from 1476 and were made by painters of the school of Ohrid.