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The village of Ilindentsi, where nature meets marble, wine and art



The village of Ilindentsi in South western Bulgaria celebrates a holiday on August 2. On that day the Ilinden-Transfiguration uprising broke out in 1903, which marked the culmination of the struggle of the Bulgarians in Macedonia and Edirne Thrace, which remained under Ottoman domination after the Liberation in 1878.



Most of the local residents are descendants of refugees from Aegean Macedonia, who settled in the village after the Bucharest Peace Treaty that ended the Second Balkan War was signed in 1913. Here is more from the village mayor Boyko Ibrishimov,

“There are nearly a thousand inhabitants, almost 80% of them retired. Some of the able-bodied men make their living in the marble industry, as the largest marble quarry in the Balkans happens to be here. The women are mostly employed in the clothes making factories. However, viticulture and wine making are also important livelihoods. There are people who live on tourism for the Bulgarian and foreign tourists who come here. The village is surrounded by mountain tops and interesting rock formations, from where trails leading to Mount Pirin begin.”



Nature in the area is particularly beautiful and charges people with energy and calm. One of the mountain trails leads to a spring with curative properties, near which a chapel was built. There are also karst caves and colourful mountain localities in the region. Boyko Ibrishimov considers there is unused potential for development, which is one of the alternatives to immigration.



“Several of my peers have emigrated,” Boyko Ibrishimov explains. “They work in Spain, the UK or Germany, and then come back and leave again. If they cannot find employment at a marble workshop here, they go abroad to make money.”

It is very interesting that foreigners, mainly British and Russian, have chosen to settle in the village of Ilindentsi.

“We have two British couples who bought their own houses and settled permanently here 4 or 5 years ago. They are retired people. They keep their yards beautifully trimmed and receive friends and relatives from the UK in the summer, who are very fond of our region,” Boyko Ibrishimov exclaims.

The Russians and the Brits have attended Bulgarian classes and have no difficulties communicating with the local residents. “What is more, they adopted some of our habits,” the mayor explains. “We meet often, we party together, they play Bulgarian folk dances with us and then they send photographs to friends an family in the UK and Russia.”



The village holds two important feasts. The first one is a wine festival marked on the first Saturday of February. There the local winemakers, some 50 to 60 men, display their production. Professionals taste the wines and award distinctions to the best vintage.

The second festival is held in the weekend that precedes the village holiday, August 2nd. It is an occasion for friends and families to gather in one place from all over the world. The festival features folk songs performed by the women’s female choir, and also dances performed by the children from the nearby town of Sandanski, etc.



The International Symposium on Sculpture also contributes a great deal to the popularity of the village of Ilindentsi worldwide. Its first edition was held in 1998. The idea belonged to the renowned Bulgarian sculptor Ivan Rusev, who suggested that artists from all over the world should gather in one place to exchange ideas, create works of art together, and this is how it happened that the sculptures made during the symposium were arranged in a park of their own. Ivan Rusev’s dream is to build a themed park named “City of Marble” with its own infrastructure at the foot of the mountain.