Aladzha Monastery is a medieval Orthodox Christian cave monastery

Cave monastery

A cave monastery is a monastery built in caves, with possible outside facilities. St. Anthony the Great known as the founder of monasticism lived in a cave.- List of cave monasteries :*Albania**St...

 complex in northeastern Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

, 17 km north of central Varna

Varna

Varna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, with a population of 334,870 inhabitants according to Census 2011...

 and 3 km west of Golden Sands

Golden Sands

Golden Sands is a major seaside resort town on the northern Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, adjacent to a national park of the same name in the municipality of Varna....

 beach resort, in a protected forest area adjacent to the Golden Sands Nature Park

Golden Sands Nature Park

Golden Sands Nature Park is a national park on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast in Varna Province. It is spread on an area of 1320.7 hectares. The park is 9.2 km long and on the average 1.2 km wide; it was declared a protected territory in 1943...

.

The monastery caves were hewn into a 25-m high vertical carst cliff near the upper edge of the Franga plateau on several levels. The complex also includes two small nearby catacombs

Catacombs

Catacombs, human-made subterranean passageways for religious practice. Any chamber used as a burial place can be described as a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman empire...

.

Dedicated to the Holy Trinity, it was an active hesychast

Hesychasm

Hesychasm is an eremitic tradition of prayer in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and some of the Eastern Catholic Churches, such as the Byzantine Rite, practised by the Hesychast Hesychasm is an eremitic tradition of prayer in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and some of the Eastern Catholic Churches,...

 monastic community of the Second Bulgarian Empire

Second Bulgarian Empire

The Second Bulgarian Empire was a medieval Bulgarian state which existed between 1185 and 1396 . A successor of the First Bulgarian Empire, it reached the peak of its power under Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II before gradually being conquered by the Ottomans in the late 14th-early 15th century...

 since the 12th century and perhaps survived until the early 18th century. Nearby, remains of a 5th-century cave monastery have also been found.

A cave monastery may have existed not far from the modern monastery Aladzha, near Varna. Its early dating to the fourth century is secured by fragments of glassware, but coins of Justinian indicate that the complex may have still been in use during the 500s.

As late as the early 20th century, the forested hills surrounding the monastery and known as Hachuka (Mount of the Cross) or Latin, were regarded by locals as sacred and inhabited by a mythical chthonic

Chthonic

Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land or the land as territory...

 daemon

Daemon (mythology)

The words dæmon and daimôn are Latinized spellings of the Greek "δαίμων", a reference to the daemons of Ancient Greek religion and mythology, as well as later Hellenistic religion and philosophy...

 treasure keeper, Imri Pop or Rim-Papa http://liternet.bg/publish/tmollov/rim_papa_2.htm.

Today, the grotto

Grotto

A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide...

 is a popular tourist destination. Its present name appeared in the late Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 period; (Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

 for motley) referred to its colourful mural

Mural

A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...

s, now almost destroyed. Thematic light shows are being staged in the summer.