Bozhenishki Urvich

The fortress occupies a narrow spur on the northern slope of the Lakavishki (also recorded as Lakavitsa) ridge and is organized in three defensive belts. Two of these belts belong to the late fifth and early sixth centuries and reflect the early Byzantine phase, while a later ring of fortification was added in the fourteenth century. The defended complex encloses a total area of about 1,600 square metres, with the citadel or inner stronghold covering roughly 80 square metres.

The principal masonry remains include an inner wall that runs approximately 200 metres and reaches widths of up to about 2.7 metres in places, and an outer curtain that survives to heights between four and six metres. The outer face is reinforced at intervals by four projecting buttresses. These walls present successive building phases, with late antique foundations preserved beneath medieval repairs and additions.

Within the enclosed area excavators documented a deep water cistern cut into the rock, measured at roughly ten metres in depth and holding water with the level recorded at around four metres at the time of study. A small chapel hewn directly into the rock was found inside the fortress, and in the north-eastern sector a rock-cut church contains a ruined rock icon representing Saint George the Victorious, attesting to the site’s religious use in the medieval period.

Fortified towers and hidden features were part of the defensive plan. The south-west corner tower contained a concealed exit roughly 7.4 metres long and an internal shelter arranged to hold eight people; these passages and the shelter have since been filled with earth. Around the perimeter archaeologists recovered hundreds of military objects, including arrow and spearheads and stone missiles, together with the skeletal remains of fighters, indicating violent encounters at the walls.

Excavations also exposed a necropolis of forty-eight graves and revealed a monastic complex beneath the fortress mound, linking the place to both burial practice and monastic life. The coin hoard found near the gates lay at depths between 0.2 and 1.5 metres and the struck coins exhibit both the portrait of Tsar Ivan Alexander and later over-stamping in the name of Ivan Shishman, with the Virgin and Child shown on the obverse. Early Byzantine coins from the reigns of Justin I and Justinian I and a range of ceramic finds further document the long sequence of use recorded at the site.