The Batoshevo Monastery lies at a distance of 20 km southwest of Sevlievo in a beautiful mountainous site. A stone inscription, preserved at the National Archaeology Museum tells that the founder of the monastery was the Bulgarian patriarch king Mihail-Asen (1248-1258). Like the other monasteries around Veliko Tarnovo at the time of the fall of Bulgaria under the Ottoman yoke the Batoshevo monastery was also plundered and burned down. According to the annals of the monastery monk Isak settled at the site of the destroyed monastery in 1809. In 1835 he began the restoration of the monastery to its present-day outlook. The church and part of the housing quarters were built with the support of the people from the adjacent villages. The murals of the monastery's church are from 1860-1868. The mural paintings in the church are of extremely intensive and contrasting colors. The iconostasis was made of a walnut tree and is a masterpiece. It has a complex composition of 12 vertical columns among which are the icons: "Saint Georgi", Saint Nikola", "Saint Archangel Michael", "Jesus the Almighty", "The Assumption", "Joan the Forefather" and "Saint Dimiter".
The monastery's housing quarters date from XIX c. and are situated at the eastern, northern and western sides of the church. They engirdled the monastery's yard with double-floor corpora with wide verandas like most of the monasteries of that time. Soon after its construction the Batoshevo monastery became a prosperous educational center. After the failure of the April Rebellion the Turkish armies plundered and burned down the housing and farming buildings. Only the temple survived without serious damage.
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Performance of Bulgarian Orthodox Choir
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Icon of Saint Dimitar
