LOVECH lies an hour's drive to the south of Pleven, dunked between the rolling foothills of the Balkan Mountains. It divides precisely into two sections, the flagstoned walkways and plazas of the modern centre contrasting sharply with the grey stone roofs and protruding chardaks of the nineteenth-century Varosh , or old town , now an architectural preservation area. An important strategic point since Thracian times, standing guard over the northern approaches to the Troyan Pass, Lovech has become famous in more recent times for having once been the headquarters of Vasil Levski , whose statue and museum are now major attractions.

Nowadays Lovech is notorious for having been the site of one of Bulgaria's largest postwar concentration camps, which the inmates dubbed Slânchev bryag (Sunny Beach) in a grimly ironic reference to the well-known Black Sea holiday resort. On a happier note, the town is home to the Liteks football team , whose rise in recent years from obscurity to the upper reaches of the league (they were national champions in 2000) is one of the more positive stories to emerge from an otherwise stagnating sport.