Bulgaria Kyustendil

Kyustendil is a town in the far west of Bulgaria, and the capital of the Kyustendil Province. The town is situated in the southern part of the Kyustendil Valley, near the borders of Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia. During the Iron Age, a Thracian settlement was located within the town, later known as Roman Pautalia in the 1st century AD. In the Middle Ages, the town switched hands between the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria and Serbia, prior to Ottoman annexation in 1395. The town was liberated in 1878 from the Ottoman Empire. Among its attractions you will find the Regional History Museum, an Art Gallery, and the ruins of a Roman spa.

Rila is a town in southwestern Bulgaria, in Rila Municipality, part of Kyustendil Province. It is the administrative center of Rila municipality, which lies in the southeastern part of Kyustendil Province. The town lies in a mountainous region at the foot of the southwestern Rila Mountains, 20km from the Rila Monastery. In antiquity, the area was inhabited by the Greeks and Romans; it was known as Sportela and then as Roligera. In the 14C, the village was a feudatory possession of the Rila Monastery and may have been mentioned in Tsar Ivan Shishman of Bulgaria's Rila Charter as Driska. Later on, it was mentioned as İrlie in Ottoman tax registers of 1576.