Kovachevitsa is a small village in the western Rhodopes, designated a protected architectural reserve, that has retained an extraordinary concentration of 18th and 19th-century stone houses in almost original condition. The village is less visited than Shiroka Laka — it sits on a dead-end road that requires deliberate effort to reach — and this isolation has both preserved its character and given it a melancholy, half-abandoned quality. Some houses are holiday homes; others are permanently inhabited by the village's small year-round population.
The architecture is distinctive: two and three-storey houses with thick stone walls, small-paned windows, carved wooden ceilings, and cobbled courtyards. Several have been restored as guesthouses with traditional interiors. Walking the village takes about an hour; there is a small restaurant and that is roughly the extent of the tourist infrastructure. For those interested in Bulgarian vernacular architecture, it is one of the finest examples in the country.