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The museum is open from Monday to Sunday, from 09:00 to 17:30
Hristo Botev Square 2
The museum is open from Monday to Sunday, from 09:00 to 17:30
Hristo Botev Square 2

The “Botev’s Room” Exhibition

The "Botev's Room" Exhibition

This room is dedicated to the legendary detachment of the poet-revolutionary Hristo Botev, whose act of heroism marked the final days of the April uprising.

       The heroic deeds of Botev’s detachment were a prelude to the Russia-Turkey 1877-1878 war that brought liberty to the Bulgarian people.  Vratsa was liberated on 9th November 1877 by General Leonov’s detachment.

       After the Liberation Vratsa became the focal point of the traditional annual events commemorating Botev’s exploit.  It is precisely these events that the thematic exhibition centers upon.

      The idea for the formation of Botev’s detachment sprang from the Gyurgevski Revolutionary Committee, an initiator and organizer of the April uprising in 1876.  The detachment was led by the genius poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev.  The grand idea for the liberation of the captive fatherland united in one 205 revolutionaries from all over Bulgaria.  Disguised as gardeners they boarded the Austrian steamship “Radetzky” on the Danube river in Romania from various ports marked on a special map.

       On the 17th of May to the  29th of May 1876, the audacious plot to capture the steamship “Radetzky” was realized between Beket and Kozloduy, and “Radetzky” laid aboard by force on the Kozloduy shore.  Those were moments of suspense and high patriotic spirit.  The exciting scene when the revolutionists landed and made an oath on the Bulgarian land is shown in the exhibition through the wonderful picture of Prof. Dimiter Gyudzhenov. An illuminated map and photographs mark the heroic route of the detachment from Kozloduy to Vratsa Balkan – 120 km.  The key moments of the battle march are mapped out: short rests at the locality “Mateev geran” near the village of Harlets, and the two small inns in the village of Butan.  The unequal and strenuous battle dated 18th  May – 30th May 1876 near Milin Kamak, in the vicinities of the village of Banitsa, where the detachment suffered about 30 precious victims, including the standard-bearer Nikola Hristov Simov – Kuruto; the whole of the next day was spent in suspense at the locality Kolova (at present BotevaPolyana in expectation of reinforcements from Vratsa, which was all in vain, as the attempt for an uprising had already been suppressed; the culmination of the heroic epic – the battle in Vratsa Balkan, in which on 20th May – 1st June, the detachment suffered its most cherished victim – the leader Hristo Botev.

      With their heroic deeds the participants in the April uprising and Botev’s detachment brought about the declaration of the Russia-Turkey war that liberated Bulgaria in 1877-1878.  Thousands of Bulgarian volunteers took part in it.  Five of them, the townsmen from Vratsa, Grigoriy Naydenov, Kosta and Ivan Boshnyakovi, Ivancho Tsvetkov and Mito Ankov founded the horse squadron as part of the Bulgarian volunteers force.  More than 240 people from Vratsa region were awarded decorations and medals for bravery for their heroism in the military actions.

        Vratsa was liberated on 9th November 1877, when three thousand troopers of the special right-front “flying” squadron of General-Major Nikolay Stepanovich Leonov launched a vigorous attack on the town from both sides and gained control over it.  The grateful population of Vratsa handed to their liberator the symbolic key to the town.

        After the Liberation the people started building monuments as a tribute to the deed of Hristo Botev and his detachment and the national freedom fighters.  Vratsa became the center of the traditional events commemorating Botev’s feat.

        The exhibition also shows original photographs and archive materials of Botev’s revolutionaries, the Manifest that declared the Russia-Turkey war from 1877-1878, decorations, medals and insignia, and weapons of the Volunteers’ Corps, the symbolic key to Vratsa that was handed to General Leonov on the day of the town’s liberation from the Ottoman rule, etc.