Bassarbovo monastery is the only active rock monastery in Bulgaria today.   It is situated in the canyon-like valley of the river Lom, home of another three hundred rock premises, forty of which has been used as churches. Some of them were naturally formed, while others were cut out by man. Most of the monasteries were inhabited after XIIth century AD and some of them even before that. During that period hermit life widely spread out in Bulgaria. Monks, whose faith in God was strong, left the world and sought for secluded places to pray and commune with God.       The name of Bassarbovo monas-tery is mentioned for the first time in 1431 in the Turkish tax records. In XVI century the monastery was abandoned. At the end of XVIII^th century some of the inhabitants of the village that took refuge in Romania came back and in 1865 started the construction of a new temple over the rock at the villa-ge centre. However, temple’s dimensions were so huge that the money soon ran out. The people from the village decided to ask for the mediation of Petar Hadjidimitrov - merchant in Bucharest, with the Romanian authorities for co-operation in collecting donations for the church. It was successfully finished and sanctified, but dur-ing the Russian-Turkish war (1877-1878) it was burned down to the grounds. The chur-ch was re-established in 1882.                     In 1911 was established Antiques’ Com-mittee to the National Archaeological Museum in Sofia, whose main task was to create an archaeological map of Bulgaria. Set with the mission, Karel Skorpil set off an expedition downstream Lom rivers’. He visited Bassarbovo monastery too, and made a detailed description.                      We don’t know exactly when the monaste- Bassarbovo monastery,as K. Skorpil saw it in 1912 ry was abandoned during the long and painful Turkish yoke. In 1919 the mo-nastery was attended by the pious seminarist from Rousse and future bishop of Smolen -Tihon. In 1937 г. it was taken by monk Hrisant, who started to re-novate it. During the same year, ‘A Committee For Cons-truction Of St. Dimitry Bassar-bovski’s Chapel’ was estab-lished, and one of its first acti-vities was the erection of a small chamber within the alre-ady enclosed churchyard. However, during the river’s overflow in 1940 the chamber was flooded. Meanwhile, father Hrisant began collect-     The monastery in 1938.                                                               ing donations for the monas-tery and in one month he gathered materials for the construction of two cells, which were finished at the end of August 1940. In 1937 the chapel was also errected.                                                                                                                                                  On the 21st of May 1953 the Romanian Patriarch Yustinian accompanied by Romanian and Bulgarian Episcops visited the monastery. The 300th anniver-sary of the death of St. Dimitry Bassarbovsky was solemnly celebrated on the 27th of October 1985. The Bulgarian Patriarch Maxim and the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church officiated a Holy Mass.

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