Perperikon
Sign in to savePerperikon (), also Perpericum, is an ancient Thracian city located in the Eastern Rhodope Mountains, 15 km northeast of the present-day town of Kardzhali, Bulgaria on a 470 m high rocky hill, which is thought to have been a sacred place. The village of Gorna krepost ("Upper Fortress") is located at the foot of the hill and the gold-bearing Perpereshka River flows nearby. Perperikon is the largest megalith ensemble site in the Balkans. In the Middle Ages Perperikon served as a fortress.
Key facts
- Ancient site.name
- Perperikon
- Ancient site.image
- Perperikon Nenko Lazarow 023.JPG
- Ancient site.caption
- The ruins of the ancient city of Perperikon
- Ancient site.map_type
- Bulgaria
- Ancient site.map_alt
- Location in Bulgaria
- Ancient site.map_size
- 250px
- Ancient site.relief
- yes
- Ancient site.location
- Kardzhali Province, Bulgaria
- Ancient site.region
- Thrace
- Ancient site.type
- Settlement, capital with Palace and Shrine
- Ancient site.material
- rock-cut, stone masonry
- Ancient site.built
- 5000 BCE, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Classical era
- Ancient site.abandoned
- 14th century
- Ancient site.cultures
- Thracian, Roman, Byzantine
- Ancient site.excavations
- 1931; from 2000 and still ongoing;
- Ancient site.archaeologists
- Nikolay Ovcharov
- Ancient site.condition
- In ruins
via Wikipedia infobox
~4 min read
Encyclopedic overview
8 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- History
- Church
- Gallery
- Other sites named Perperek
- See also
- References
- External links
Perperikon (), also Perpericum, is an ancient Thracian city located in the Eastern Rhodope Mountains, 15 km northeast of the present-day town of Kardzhali, Bulgaria on a 470 m high rocky hill, which is thought to have been a sacred place. The village of Gorna krepost ("Upper Fortress") is located at the foot of the hill and the gold-bearing Perpereshka River flows nearby. Perperikon is the largest megalith ensemble site in the Balkans. In the Middle Ages Perperikon served as a fortress.
==Etymology== The name Perperikon () dates from the Middle Ages – 11th–13th centuries. The original name Hyperperakion was shortened by scribes to Perperakion or Perperikon. There are at least two theories about the origin and meaning of the name, both associating it with gold-mining: The city may have been named after a medieval high-temperature gold-refining process (Medieval Greek ), or the resumed use of a classical-era name for the site, derived from a word for altar-fire (ancient Greek ).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Perperikon” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
Gallery (2)
On the map
2 mapped locations