The monastery was founded in the tenth century by a holy man called Ivan of Rila, who lived alone in a mountain cave nearby. Monks came to learn from him, and slowly they built a place to live and pray together. The buildings you can see today were mostly built or beautifully decorated in the nineteenth century, after a fire.
The inside walls of the church are covered in thousands of brightly painted pictures called frescoes. There are more than 1,200 of them, showing scenes from the Bible and the lives of saints. The colours are still vivid — deep reds, sky blues and golden yellows — even though they were painted almost two hundred years ago.
Rila Monastery sits at 1,147 metres above sea level in a valley surrounded by pine forests. In winter the surrounding peaks are snowy; in summer the air smells of resin and wild flowers. Visitors walk through a big stone gate into a courtyard and suddenly feel very small next to the towering striped walls.
The monastery is not just a museum — monks still live and work there today. It has been a place of learning for Bulgarian language and culture for centuries, and many important old books and manuscripts were kept safe inside its walls.