The “St. John the Precursor”

The “St. John the Precursor” monastery of Lopushana is situated at 300 m altitude above sea-level near the town of Chiprovtsi. In the place of the present-day monastery used to be another monastery, built as early as the Second Bulgarian Kingdom and subsequently destroyed at the time of the Turkish invasion. It was rebuilt in 1853 with the help of the people from the nearby village of Loposhana. The Lopushana monastery was the favourite place of Ivan Vazov, who wrote here part of his unforgettable novel “Under the Yoke”. Special merit to the modern appearance of the monastery has Archimandrite Ambrosius, an engineer by profession.

The “St. John the Precursor” monastery church was sanctified in 1856 and represents a massive rectangular building with five domes. The central wood-carved iconostasis is of great interest; it was made in 1863 by the iconographer Nikolay Dospevski of Samokov.