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Zemen Monastery

The Zemen Monastery (Bulgarian: Земенски манастир, Zemenski manastir ) i s a  Bulgarian Orthodox monastery

located one kilometre away from Zemen in westernBulgaria.

The monastery was established in the 11th century. It israther small with a church, belfry and two other buildings. It is currently uninhabited. The church

is a monument of culture.

The church dates from the foundation of the monastery in the late 11th century and has a cube

shape, 9 metres long, 8 metres wide, 11.20 metres high. The material used was travertine. The

altar is a stone monolith and the floor is made of colourful tiles. The church is richly paintedinside, with two layers of frescoes, the scarcely preserved early one dating to the 11th century.

The better preserved Biblical scenes date from the mid-14th century and include several portraitsof donors: the first one depicting an unnamed man, his wife Doya and their two children, the

second featuring a young man, Vitomir, and a boy, Stoyu. These portraits rank among the oldest

and artistically most valuable in the Balkans after the frescoes of the Boyana Church.

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Земенският манастир - приказка за стари времена

The Boyana Church (Bulgarian: Боянскацърква,  Boyanska tsarkva) is a medieval 

Bulgarian Orthodox church situated on the

outskirts of   Sofia,

the capital of  Bulgaria, in the

Boyana quarter. The

east wing of thetwo-storey church

was originally

constructed in thelate 10th or early 11th century, then the central wing was added in

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the 13th century under the Second Bulgarian Empire, the whole building being finished with a

further expansion to the west in the middle of the 19th century. The church owes its world fame

mainly to its frescoes  from 1259. They form a second layer over the paintings from earlier centuries and represent one of the most complete and well-preserved monuments of  Eastern 

European mediaeval art. A total of 89 scenes with 240 human images are depicted on the walls

of the church. The name of the painter is recently discovered during restoration. The inscriptionreads: "zograph Vassilii from the village Subonosha, Sersko and his apprentice Dimitar".

 National History Museum director  Bozhidar Dimitrov stated: "The renovation revealed a rare

inscription under a layer of plaster on one of the church walls: 'I, Vasiliy' inscribed. We now

know the painter with certainty. The 13th-century 'Boyana master' was the only painter amongthe kings and nobles whose names were read out on a regular basis during sermons at the

church."[1] Restorator Grigoriy Grigorov stated the reason: "The Christian Orthodox religion

forbids the painter from manifesting himself, as in the eyes of the priests it is God who guides hishand. But this painter inscribed his name, knowing that the believers could not see it."[2]

18 scenes in the narthex depict the life of Saint Nicholas. The painter here drew certain aspectsof contemporary lifestyle. In The Miracle at Sea, the ship and the sailors' hats recall the Venetian 

fleet. The portraits of the patrons of the church — Sebastocrator Kaloyan and his wife Desislava,as well as those of Bulgarian tsar  Constantine Tikh and Tsaritsa Irina, are thought to be among

the most impressive and lifelike frescoes in the church, and are located on the north wall of the

church.

Besides the first layer of 11th-12th century frescoes, of whichonly fragments are preserved, and the famous second layer of 

murals from 1259, the church also has a smaller number of later 

frescoes from the 14th and 16th-17th century, as well as from

1882.

The monument was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List

in 1979. The frescoes were restored and cleaned in 1912-1915

 by an Austrian and a Bulgarian specialist, as well in 1934 and1944. The church was closed for the public in 1977 in order to be conserved and restored and

once again opened in 2000.