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After a 4 hour trek around Assenovgrad trying to find this place we eventually worked out the Bulgarian for "Where is Asen’s fortress" and put it on a postik note, then showed it to people who pointed us in the right direction.
Standing high in the Rhodope Mountains lays the remnants of a much larger defence structure used to protect the only pass to the Aegean sea, high on the left hand bank of the Chepelare River.
Original artefacts date the site back to the time of the Thracian’s, but most of what’s left standing was after renovations in the 13th century (more precisely 1231) by the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Asen II to serve as a border fortification against Latin raids, hence it’s name.
The shadow at the base of the "Church of the Holy Mother of God" is the remains of a Castle that we climbed on to look back down.
