Monastery of Saint John of Rila
— — a courtyard wrapped in striped arcades.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria, founded in the tenth century in honour of the hermit Ivan of Rila. The buildings sit at about 1,150 metres in a valley of the Rilska River, ringed by spruce and beech. The court is paved in stone and held by tiers of red and white striped arcades, with the Nativity church at the centre and its bell tower beside it. A UNESCO site since 1983; monks still live and pray here.
Monastery of Saint John of Rila, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Rila Monastery stands at roughly 1,150 metres in the Rilska River valley, about 117 kilometres south of Sofia and 22 kilometres east of the town of Rila in Kyustendil Province. Tradition credits its founding to the hermit Ivan of Rila in the 10th century; the complex was moved to its present site after his death and rebuilt repeatedly, most recently after a fire in 1833. The main church of the Nativity of the Virgin and the surrounding residential ranges date from that 19th-century reconstruction, with the tower of Hrelyo, built in 1335, surviving as the oldest standing structure on the grounds.
The court is enclosed by four residential wings, each three storeys high, with about 300 monastic cells. The arcades that face the court are striped in red and white plaster over stone, with black-and-white painted arches above. The Nativity church at the centre carries five domes and an outer narthex covered in frescoes finished between 1840 and 1848, with the master Zahari Zograf painting part of the exterior cycle. The carved iconostasis is gilded walnut, about ten metres wide; the bell tower next to it rises from the older Hrelyo tower of 1335.
The monastery is reached by a single mountain road through the Rilska River gorge, about a two-hour drive from Sofia. The court is open daily without an entrance fee, with the museum and the kitchen tower charging a small ticket. About 60 monks live on site; services are held morning and evening and visitors are asked to wear covered shoulders and knees. The relics of Saint Ivan of Rila rest in the main church. A small guesthouse on the grounds takes pilgrims; the village of Rila has the closest hotels, twenty minutes back down the valley.