Work / monument · monument

Rila Monastery

10th century · 10th century

Rila Monastery is the largest Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria, in the Rila Mountains south of Sofia, founded in the tenth century by followers of the hermit Saint John of Rila. Its charter from Tsar Ivan Shishman of 1378 survives, and it preserved Bulgarian culture under Ottoman rule. The present buildings date mainly from the 1830s to 1860s, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Rila Monastery
Image: Raggatt2000 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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Second Bulgarian EmpireGovernance

See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Rila Monastery. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/rila-monastery
MLA
“Rila Monastery.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/rila-monastery. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Rila Monastery.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/rila-monastery.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Rila Monastery’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/rila-monastery (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻