Peshtera Monastery

It was only renovated in 1842 by Dimitar Molerov of the Bansko artistic school, with the financial aid of the monk Simeon and his son.

During the liberational Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, however, it was burned by the retreating Ottoman troops who hanged Simeon, with his son fleeing to the Rila Monastery.

The new entrance from the west was designed as a three-arched portico with an arc-shaped pediment featuring a round window.

A statue of the Ancient Roman god Mithras was unearthed during the reconstruction, leading to the assumption that a pre-Christian sanctuary existed at that place.

Until the early 1990s, the monastery had a stone icon of Saint Nicholas made in 1853 by master Stoimen of Lobosh, but it has disappeared.