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Photo: Filipov Ivo, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This Thracian megalith, the Womb Cave (Cult complex “Utroba cave” Тракийско светилище Пещера Утроба) is located near village of Ilinica. The temple is shaped like the opening to a vagina. It leads into a 22-m deep cave. At the end of the cave, a carved altar (1.3 m in height) symbolises the womb itself. At midday as the sun approaches its highest point, the sun light seeps into the cave through a special opening in the ceiling and projects a perfectly recognisable representation of a phallus onto the floor. As the sun progresses further, and the light slants across the interior of the cave, the phallus grows longer, reaching out to the womb altar. Only during some months of the year, when the sun is lowest on the horizon, the phallus becomes long enough to reach the altar and symbolically fecundate the womb. A well marked tourist route exists through Enchec village and around 300 m after mountain cottage “Borovica”. The way to the cave includes around an hour of walking up. The path is steep but with three big alcoves and a shelter right under the cleft of the cliff. Local people know the place as Dangardak kaya (The echoing stone). Today childless couples visit the Womb cave to gain a long-awaited child.
The Utroba Cave, also known as Womb Cave, is an ancient cave sanctuary in Kardzhali Province, Bulgaria. Located in the Eastern Rhodope Mountains near the Ilinitsa village, the cave resembles a human vulva and dates to the Thracian period. Historians believe that it was once used as a fertility shrine.
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Дяволският мост
Nice place with old stone bridge over a river. The view is great! Legend says that the bridge was built by the Romans to connect the Aegean Sea and the Thrace region of Bulgaria. The bridge is the largest and best-known of its kind in the Rhodope Mountains,
The stone mushrooms are a rock phenomenon near the village of Beli Plast. They reach a height of 2.5–3 m.
Eagle Rock Sanctuary
A historic Thracian site near Ardino and consists of niches cut into a large rock standing above the forest. The site was obviously of religious significance. This Thracian phenomenon, the "trapezoid alcoves" are found all over the Rhodopes dug high in difficult to reach rocks. There is no definite answer as to how or why the Thracian people made them. The Orlovi skali (Eagles' Rocks) site carries about 100 insections. From Ardino an asphalted road takes you to a small parking at the start of a trail. It takes about 15 min of moderate intensity walk to get there.
An archaeological site with monumental megalithic structures, dating back from the Bronze Age and is considered to be the largest megalithic archaeological site in all of Bulgaria.
The fortress was built in the 10th century to protect an important trade route. It frequently changed hands but the Byzantines held it most of the time. The trail to the fortress is quite difficult and takes about 1 hr but the views from this fortress are breathtaking.
(Karadzhov Kamak) is an interesting rock phenomenon near the village Mostovo. On a high plateau (1,448 m), a gaping fugue has formed on its vertical walls, in which a huge stone is stuck, as if displaced by higher forces there. Since antiquity, this place has been something special for the people - the ancient Thracians built a sanctuary here in which they honored their dead. To this day, small pits cut into the rock for religious purposes have been preserved, as well as steps leading to the upper part of the massif.