Monument to the Asen Dynasty

A monument in a bend of the Yantra, erected in 1985 for the 800th anniversary of the uprising that returned Bulgaria's independence from Byzantium and founded the Second Bulgarian Empire. The composition is built around an obelisk in the form of an upright sword about thirty metres high; at its foot four bronze equestrian figures fan out — the brothers Asen and Peter, who raised the revolt in 1185, and the tsars Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II, under whom the empire reached its greatest extent. The sculptor Krum Damyanov worked in broad planes, and the horses and riders are deliberately angular and read as silhouettes. The platform is pushed out onto a headland above the river, and from it there is a view over the city's quarters, climbing the slope in tiers, and over the Tsarevets hill opposite. A park laid out around it runs down to the water; in the evening the monument is floodlit.

On the map