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 oxteam 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
Stara Zagora
Slomer
Aleksandrovo