Zemen Monastery

Coordinates: 42°28′3″N 22°44′18″E / 42.46750°N 22.73833°E / 42.46750; 22.73833

The Zemen Monastery (Bulgarian: Земенски манастир, Zemenski manastir) is a Bulgarian Orthodox monastery located one kilometre away from the town of Zemen, Pernik Province in western Bulgaria.

The monastery was established in the 11th century. It is rather small with a church, belfry and two other buildings. It is currently uninhabited. The church is a monument of culture.

The church dates from the foundation of the monastery in the late 11th century and has a cube shape, 9 metres long, 8 metres wide, 11.20 metres high. The material used was travertine. The altar is a stone monolith and the floor is made of colourful tiles. The church is richly painted inside, with two layers of frescoes, the scarcely preserved early one dating to the 11th century. The better preserved Biblical scenes date from the mid-14th century and include several portraits of donors: the first one depicting an unnamed man, his wife Doya and their two children, the second featuring a young man, Vitomir, and a boy, Stoyu. These portraits rank among the oldest and artistically most valuable in the Balkans after the frescoes of the Boyana Church.

Zemen

Zemen (Bulgarian: Земен) is a town in Pernik Province, western Bulgaria. Located near the Pchelina Reservoir on the banks of the Struma River, it is the administrative centre of Zemen Municipality.

The old name of Zemen was Belovo; it was renamed to Zemen in 1925. The new name was initially only given to the railway station nearby, but it was soon carried over to the village itself. The present name commemorates the medieval castle of Zemlangrad, which was located in the Struma gorge in the vicinity of Zemen. The fortress was first mentioned in the 11th-century Tale of Isaiah as ЗЄМЛЬНЬ ГРАД and as ЗЄМЛЪНЬ in a 15th-16th century Serbian chronicle. The toponym is derived from the Bulgarian word for "land" (земя, zemya) and refers, according to the locals, to the only arable land in the rocky surrounding area.

Proclaimed a town in 1974, Zemen is famous for the medieval Zemen Monastery located on its outskirts. The population of the town is mostly Bulgarian Orthodox.

Honour

Zemen Knoll on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Zemen.