Despite being named after Macedonia's greatest revolutionary, GOTSE DELCHEV is one of the Pirin's mellowest towns, set in a wide valley watered by the Mesta and suffused with a bucolic air, cows stalking the bus station and tobacco leaves drying in back gardens.

From the bus station, ul. Vancharska leads past a red-brick synagogue (long since converted into apartments), to some nineteenth-century crafts workshops at the lower end of the main shopping street, ul. Târgovska, a cobbled boulevard lined with cherry trees and crumbling houses. On ul. Botev, which crosses it, the old Prokopov House contains a History Museum (Tues-Sat 10am-noon & 2-6pm) with a collection of folk costumes, and artefacts from Nicopolis ad Nestrum, but a better set-piece is the Rifat Beikâshta (same hours), embodying the lifestyle and crafts of the National Revival era. It's located beside the Delchecska River on the far side of the canal, near a 500-year-old, 24m-high plane tree called Chinarbei .