Night of the Museums for the 11th time in Veliko Tarnovo

The Regional History Museum in Veliko Tarnovo is taking part and organizing The Night of Museums and Galleries initiative for 11^th year in a row. This year the event will take place on 15^th May, Friday, the venue being the Middle Ages churches located at the foot of Tsarevets Fortress; this year’s edition will be dedicated to the 830^th anniversary of the Uprising of the Asen and Petar.

The Church of Saints Petar and Paul will be open for free visits from 5 pm till 1 am; guides on the site will be telling about the history of the church to everyone. The Church of St Demetrius of Thessaloniki and The Holy Forty Martyrs Church and the Great Lavra Monastery will be available from 7.30 pm onwards; entrance is again free.

The festive part of the night will start at 9 pm with a torch march from The Church of St Demetrius of Thessaloniki along the Vladishki Bridge next to The Holy Forty Martyrs Church. Sky lanterns will then be released. Visitors will hear a narrative about the various legends related to the church, the ghost girl from the church and Tsar Kaloyan and listen to various ecclesiastical Slavic chants.

The garden of the monastery complex will hosts a number of activities like dancing and fire performances. A lecturer at the local university will tell about the medieval cuisine and everyone present will taste food prepared according to the ancient recipes by students from the local Tourism School. The delicious food will be accompanied by a glass of wine from the winery at Gorski Dolen Trambesh.

From 9.30 to 12.00 pm an expert will demonstrate the medieval writing technique calligraphy in the scriptorium (writing room) of the monastery and a video about the history of the temple will be played in the western annex of The Holy Forty Martyrs Church.

The Night of Museums was initiated and held for the first time in Berlin in 1997. Since then it gathered momentum and today more than 120 cities in Europe organize their local nights. These cultural events have proven to be very successful gathering a great number of visitors.