Elena

The nineteenth-century National Revival town of Elena is located 40km southeast of Veliko Tarnovo. During the centuries under the Ottoman power the Turks used the town's population to guard the local mountain passes, giving them a bit of autonomy in return, so painters and wood-carvers of nineteenth-century Elena were able to decorate and ornate the churches of the surrounding countryside, and patriotic local merchants could provide some financial support for the restoration of some of the nearby monasteries like Kapinovo.

The area of Elena and its surroundings has been populated since the Neolite era. The today’s town had already turn into a large village by the 16th c. It flourished during the 18-19th c. as a centre of crafts, trade, education and revolutionary (i.e. anti-Ottoman) activity and was officially declared a town in 1860. At that time, the town was famous for its production of ‘aba' (coarse woolen cloth and upper male garments are made of it), iron, and silkworm breeding.

In the town of Elena there have been preserved the first class school, founded in 1848 and named Daskalolivnitsa where future teachers used to be educated (nowadays a museum exhibition is arranged), St. Nicholas Church (16th C., with valuable mural paintings, icons) and the three-naved Church of the Assumption, built entirely of stone (1837). On the highest point the town a clock-tower (1812) rises with an antique clock mechanism.