Samovodska Charshia

Samovodska Charshia is a partially restored 19th-century craft bazaar street in the old town, running parallel to the main pedestrian strip. The National Revival-period houses that line it now contain working craft workshops: potters, woodcarvers, goldsmiths, and leather workers still produce and sell from the same premises their predecessors occupied a century and a half ago. The street has a genuine character that distinguishes it from the more tourist-oriented main strip.

The workshops are the point here: watching a craftsman turn a pot or carve a wooden panel is more interesting than browsing the souvenir shops in the centre. Several of the more accomplished woodcarvers produce work of real quality, particularly the carved wooden frames and panels in the Bulgarian National Revival style. The street makes a natural circuit with a walk along the riverside below Tsarevets.

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A story
The charshia (bazaar street) was at its height in the 19th century, when Tarnovo was a major commercial and craft centre under Ottoman rule — the National Revival period that produced so much of Bulgaria's distinctive architecture. Many of the workshop-houses on this street were built and occupied by craftsmen who were simultaneously merchants, and the layout of shop-front below and living quarters above is preserved intact in several buildings.

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