Surrounded by orchards, rest homes and hills, BERKOVITSA itself is a drab, dozy place which nowadays betrays little of its former status as a high-altitude health resort and favoured training camp of Bulgaria's wrestlers and weightlifters. However it's an important gateway to the highland area around Mt Kom, and contains a couple of worthwhile historic sights. In addition, Klisurski monastery (not one of the major foundations, but charmingly situated nevertheless) is easily visited from here.

Berkovitsa's few remaining nineteenth-century attractions lie between the modern town square and the River Berkovska. Hidden in a lush rose garden on ul. Cherkovna, the sunken Church of Sveta Bogoroditsa (the Holy Virgin) features icons by Dimitâr and Zahari Zograf and a carved wooden iconostasis on which exquisitely wrought angels blow trumpets and dragons attack lions. Three blocks east on ul. Berkovska reka is the Ivan Vazov House-Museum (Kâshta-Muzei Ivan Vazov; officially Mon-Fri 8am-noon & 2-5pm; enquire at the ethnographic museum if shut; $1), occupying the house where Bulgaria's "national writer" spent two years as the local magistrate. While the lower floor is taken up with the usual pictures and quotes, the upper floor features an exquisitely rendered Tryavna ceiling and the sitting rooms where Vazov and his landlord, Ivan Stoyanov, held court. Both are furnished in traditional Ottoman style, with comfy minderi (low bench-seats padded with cushions) surrounding a central mangal (lidded charcoal brazier). The Ethnographic Museum , just around the corner on ul. Poruchnik Grozhdanov (Mon-Fri 8am-noon & 2-5pm; US$1), harbours a display of local arts and crafts, including a room devoted to the yellow- and green-splashed pottery that used to be a Berkovitsa trade mark, but is nowadays made by just a few craftspeople.