Just info about Belogradchik

The Belogradchik Rocks (Bulgarian: Белоградчишки скали, Belogradchishki skali) are a group of strange shaped sandstone and conglomerate rock formations located on the western slopes of the Balkan Mountains (Stara Planina) near the town of Belogradchik in northwest Bulgaria. The rocks vary in color from primarily red to yellow; some of the rocks reach up to 200 m in height. Many rocks have fantastic shapes and are associated with interesting legends. They are often named for people or objects they are thought to resemble. The Belogradchik Rocks have been declared a Natural Landmark by the Bulgarian government and are a major tourist attraction in the region.

Paintings of Belogradchik fortress

Here are two unique paintings of Belogradchik Fortress made by Felix Philipp Kanitz:

Basic information about Belogradchik

Belogradchik (Bulgarian: Белоградчик) is a town in Vidin Province, Northwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of the homonymous Belogradchik Municipality. The town, whose name literally means "small white town," is situated in the foothills of the Balkan Mountains just east of the Serbian border and about 50 km south of the Danube River. The town is famous for its unique and impressive rock formations, the Belogradchik Rocks, which cover an area of 90 square kilometers and reach up to 200 meters in height. As of December 2009, it has a population of 5,334 inhabitants.

The town is a popular tourist destination. Important landmarks are the medieval Belogradchik Fortress and the Belogradchik Rocks.
Another tourist attractions in the area are the nearby Magura Cave, famous for its beautiful prehistoric cave paintings, and the Baba Vida medieval fortress in the nearby town of Vidin on the Dunav river.

Rabisha lake

Lake Rabisha (Bulgarian: Рабишко езеро, Rabishko ezero) is the largest inland natural freshwater lake in Bulgaria. It is located in northwestern Bulgaria, between the villages of Rabisha and Tolovitsa in Belogradchik municipality, Vidin Province. The lake is abundant in fish. There are sheatfishes that can reach 300 kilograms of weight. The lake is near the famous Magura Cave, which is one of the largest caves in Bulgaria.

The mushrooms and other pictures

Here I will show you a picture of the Mushrooms and two other pictures of the Belogradchik rocks.

The mushrooms

Kozarnika cave near Belogradchik

Kozarnika (Bulgarian: Козарника, "the goat shed") is a cave in northwestern Bulgaria that was used as a hunters’ shelter as early as the Lower Paleolithic (1,6 million BP). It marks an older route of early humans’ from Africa to Europe via the Balkans, prior to the currently suggested route acrossGibraltar, and probably keeps the earliest evidence of human symbolic behaviour ever found. Here have been found the earliest European Gravette flint assemblages.

Kozarnika cave is located 6 km from the town of Belogradchik in northwestern Bulgaria, on the northern slopes of the Balkan mountain, close to the Lower Danubian plain. It is opened to the south, at 85 m above the valley. With its length of 210 m, the cave is among the small-sized in the Belogradchick karst region but studies in the last two decades uncovered 21 geological layers there, containing (moving upwards) archaeological complexes of Early Lower Paleolithic (layers 13 - 11a), Middle Paleolithic (layers 10b - 9a), Early Upper Paleolithic (layer 6/7), a sequence of an original Paleolithic bladelets industry with backed pieces that scholars called Kozarnikian (layers 5c - 3a), Early Neolithic, Late Copper age, Late Bronze Age, Medieval and Late medieval periods.

The Kozarnika cave project started in 1984. Since 1996 it has been headed by Dr. Prof. Nikolay Sirakov (Archaeological Institute and Museum of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria) and Dr. Jean-Luc Guadelli (IPGQ-UMR5199 of French National Center for Scientific Research, Bordeaux-France).

In the ground layers, dated to 1,4-1,6 million BP (using palaeomagnetism, which determines age using past patterns of reversals in the Earth's magnetic field and analyses of both the microfauna and the macrofauna) archaeologists have discovered a human molar tooth (considered to be the earliest human (Homo erectus/Homo ergaster) traces discovered in Europe outside Caucasian region), lower palaeolithic assemblages that belong to a core-and-flake non-Acheulian industry and incised bones that may be the earliest example of human symbolic behaviour.

The findings from Middle Paleolithic layers (East Balkan Levallois cores and side-scrapers as well as East Balkan Levallois and Le Moustier points, rather bifacial points, dating from 300 000 - 50 000 BP prove presence of hunters’ groups of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. Upper Paleolithic layers consist flint assemblages from the earliest European Gravette complex dating from 43 000 up to 39 000 B.P. belonging to Homo sapiens sapiens.

Here are some photos :

Isn't this a wonder ???