Painted houses in ochre, blue and oxblood, stone walls, wooden bridges over a stream and cobbled lanes climbing a green hillside: Koprivshtitsa is the most complete small town of the Bulgarian National Revival, the nineteenth-century flowering of trade, schooling and patriotism that came before independence. It lies at about a thousand metres in a fold of the Sredna Gora, and in the middle of that century its wool and livestock merchants grew rich enough to build the elaborate houses with deep eaves, carved ceilings and painted facades that make the town famous today. Several of them are open as house museums.
It was also here, in April 1876, that the first shot of the April Uprising was fired, when local rebels led by Todor Kableshkov attacked the Ottoman police post. He wrote a message to the other rebel committees in the blood of a slain official, and it went down in history as the Bloody Letter. The uprising was crushed, but it led within two years to the war that freed Bulgaria. Koprivshtitsa honours its heroes in the house museums, and the bridge where the first shot was fired is marked by a plaque.
Getting here is part of the pleasure. The road from the main valley near Pirdop and Zlatitsa climbs south over the Sredna Gora through beech and oak forest, with a good set of curves and some steep sections, and then drops into the town's high valley. From the south, the road from Strelcha and Panagyurishte runs through hills and meadows with fine views. Surfaces are mixed and the roads narrow, and the cobbles inside the town are rough, steep and slippery in the wet, so park on the edge and walk in.
Koprivshtitsa has guesthouses, mehanas and cafes, and it is a lovely place to stop for lunch or the night. Fuel is a different matter: the nearest reliable stations are in Pirdop, about sixteen kilometres to the north, or along the main road through the valley, so arrive with enough in the tank. Every five years the town hosts a large folk festival in the meadows above, with singers and dancers from all over the country; outside those weekends, it is quiet. Evenings are cool at this height, even in summer.