Shipka Pass

Worth a detour

The single most loaded piece of ground in Bulgaria: the pass where a small Russian and Bulgarian volunteer force held out through August 1877 and the winter that followed, and where the war that created the country turned. The stone tower on Stoletov Peak above it went up in 1934. It closed on 3 September 2026 for three years of conservation work, so plan on the pass and the ridge, not the interior.

Story

Background

The road crosses at around 1,185 metres between Gabrovo and Kazanlak, and in 1877 it was the hinge of the war. A force of Russian troops and Bulgarian volunteers, badly outnumbered, held the heights against Suleiman Pasha's army through the August battles and then through a winter at altitude that killed more men than the fighting did. The volunteers' defence of their regimental flag, the Samara banner, became the founding story of the modern Bulgarian army. The pass held; the road south stayed open; five centuries of Ottoman rule ended within months.

The Freedom Monument on Stoletov Peak is the memorial to that. Funded by public subscription and opened on 26 August 1934, it is a 31.5-metre stone tower shaped like a medieval Bulgarian keep, with a bronze lion over the gate, reached by a stair of about 890 steps up from the road. Inside, a marble sarcophagus on four stone lions holds remains of the dead; above it seven floors of exhibition and a viewing platform over the reconstructed batteries, trenches and graves along the ridge.

As of September 2026 all of that is shut. A three-year conservation programme costing roughly €3 million began on 3 September 2026, working April to October each season, to stop water getting into the structure, strip later plaster back to the original stone and rebuild the north stair. A new permanent exhibition is planned for the end of it. Until then the ridge, the gun positions and the view are still yours, and a road runs east along the crest to Buzludzha.