Bregare is a village in central northern 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...

, part of Dolna Mitropoliya

Dolna Mitropoliya

Dolna Mitropoliya is a town in Pleven Province of northern Bulgaria, the administrative center of Dolna Mitropoliya municipality. It is about 10 km northwest of the city of Pleven. As of December 2009, the town has a population of 3,303 inhabitants....

 municipality, Pleven Province

Pleven Province

Pleven Province is a province located in central northern Bulgaria, bordering the Danube river, Romania and the Bulgarian provinces of Vratsa, Veliko Tarnovo and Lovech. It is divided into 11 subdivisions, called municipalities, that embrace a territory of 4,333.54 km² with a population, as...

. Bregare lies on the left bank of the Iskar River, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from its mouth in the Danube

Danube

The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....

, at an elevation of around 40 metres (131.2 ft). As of 2008, it has a population of about 680 and the mayor is Sasho Stoyanov of the National Movement for Stability and Progress.

The village was settled by Balkan Mountains

Balkan Mountains

The Balkan mountain range is a mountain range in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkan range runs 560 km from the Vrashka Chuka Peak on the border between Bulgaria and eastern Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea...

 colonists from Vratsa Province

Vratsa Province

Vratsa Province , former name Vratsa okrug) is a Bulgarian province located in the northwestern part of the country, between Danube river in the north and Stara Planina mountain in the south. It is named after its main town - Vratsa...

 after the Liberation of Bulgaria

Liberation of Bulgaria

In Bulgarian historiography, the term Liberation of Bulgaria is used to denote the events of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 that led to the re-establishment of Bulgarian state with the Treaty of San Stefano of March 3, 1878, after the complete conquest of the Second Bulgarian Empire, which...

 in 1878. Prior to that, following the Crimean War

Crimean War

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

 and more specifically the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855), the 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...

 government settled Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...

 and Circassians in the area. They lived in dugouts and adobe houses, but were forced out of the country in 1878. After the Liberation, around 100 families of settlers from Kunino colonized the area; other Bulgarian colonists soon arrived. The colonists included 83 Banat Bulgarian

Banat Bulgarians

The Banat Bulgarians are a distinct Bulgarian minority group which settled in the 18th century in the region of the Banat, which was then ruled by the Habsburgs and after World War I was divided between Romania, Serbia, and Hungary...

 families from Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

 who arrived in 1894.

The Orthodox

Bulgarian Orthodox Church

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church - Bulgarian Patriarchate is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church with some 6.5 million members in the Republic of Bulgaria and between 1.5 and 2.0 million members in a number of European countries, the Americas and Australia...

 church of Archangel Michael was built in 1912–1915 and inaugurated in 1920; according to accounts of elderly people, the architect was from Macedonia

Macedonia (region)

Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but nowadays the region is considered to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, as...

. The village also has a small Roman Catholic ("Banat

Banat

The Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...

ian") church of the Holy Mother of God serving the Banat Bulgarian community. The Father Paisius school's current building was opened in 1934.