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 Kotel
Kotel
is a town which is a legend and a history! It is situated amidst the
picturesque natural scenery of the Eastern Balkan Range and is not
only a place with majestic nature, fresh air and pure mountain water,
an important cultural and historical centre.
Kotel has beautiful architectural models from the Late Revival and
one of the most important centers of the weaving art.
The name of the town is mentioned for the first time in a Turkish
document in1486. In the second half of the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth
Centuties more than 450 000 heads of sheep were said to have been
raised by the Kotel shepherds up there, far to the north east, in
the rolling planes of Dobroudzha where from endless ox team caravans
of shorn wool kept coming back to Kotel to be turned into homespun
abas and hoddens. Long term contracts for cloth deliveries to the
Ottoman Army had provided the population with considerable privileges
and had given them self - confidence and a spirit of freedom loving
and independence. The Kotel people are known to be industrious, enterprising
and studious. They used to keep up on donations of their own the 5
secular schools, to build clapboard houses with woodcut doors, carved
ceiling soffits. Women had added homespun broadloom carpets, fluffy
rugs and cushions to the beauty and warmth of their homes. Kotel is
turned into one of the richest, most beautiful, patriotic settlements
- a national center of the Bulgarian Revival.
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