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| ELENA - HISTORY |
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There are a lot of legends about the establishment of the town of Elena, but one of them, the most interesting one, is about two lovers. The legend says that in the virgin forests of the Balkan Mountains was a pathway. The happy newly -married couple was passing through this way. The bride was called Elena and the groom was Samuil. Bandits attacked the wedding ceremony. The abductors could not gain the girl’s participation, and thus she was killed.
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And Samuil was beheaded. Because of the sorrow towards their children, the parents settled down in this region and established the village that was named after Elena.
Elena is a holy place of the Bulgarian National Revival.
Every Bulgarian is proud of Jossif Bradati, the predecessor of Paisiy Hilendarski and Ilarion Makariopolski- the founder of the "Bulgarian Eastern”.
A monument of the Bulgarian culture and enlightenment is the first
Bulgarian school in Elena, called Daskalolivnitza. It is established
in the fall of 1843 by Ivan Momchilov and Nikola Mihaylovski.
Petko Slaveykov and Dragan Tsankov were students there.
In Elena, national traditions are eagerly kept. There are 147 monuments of the cultural heritage. Seven of them have national importance: the Ilarion Makariopolski museum- house, the clock- tower, Daskalolivnitsata, the Assumption and the St.Nikola churches, the five Razsukanov houses and the Popnikolov house. Elena‘s historical heritage possesses 6 000 ethnographic objects declared as cultural monuments, 780 paintings of the revival and contemporary art, as well as many old manuscripts. In the distant epoch of the Bulgarian National Revival the strong, hard-working Elena‘s people created their own destiny.
Elena will be always well-known as a town of poets: of the past-master of idylls Petko Yurdanov Todorov and the fabulist Stoyan Mihailovski, of the lyricist Ivan Kirilov and the grown up in the Balkan- Emiliyan Stanev.
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