Bregare ( , ) is a village in central northern

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

, part of

Dolna Mitropoliya Dolna Mitropoliya ( , "Lower Bishopric"; also transliterated as Dolna Mitropolia, Dolna Mitropolija) is a town in Pleven Province of northern Bulgaria, the administrative center of Dolna Mitropoliya municipality. It is about 10 km northwest ...

municipality,

Pleven Province Pleven Province ( or Плевенска Област) is a province located in central northern Bulgaria, bordering the Danube river, Romania and the Bulgarian provinces of Vratsa, Veliko Tarnovo and Lovech. It is divided into 11 subdivisions ...

. Bregare lies on the left bank of the

Iskar River The Iskar (, ; ) is a right tributary of the Danube. With a length of 368 km, it is the longest river that runs entirely within Bulgaria.

, from its mouth in the

Danube The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...

, at an elevation of around .

Geography

The village of Bregare is located on the left bank of the

Iskar River The Iskar (, ; ) is a right tributary of the Danube. With a length of 368 km, it is the longest river that runs entirely within Bulgaria.

, about 15 km from the confluence with the

Danube River The Danube ( ; see also other names) is the second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest south into the Black Sea. A large and historically important riv ...

. The altitude is 39 m. The land is divided into two parts: hilly, called "Pole" and flat - "Ormanja". To the northwest of the village many sloping slopes rise 40–70 m above it, and to the southeast, above the right bank of the Iskar River, the slopes are steeper and rise higher - up to 80–90 m above the village. The village is built in a relative plain, descending with a slope of 1/400 from southwest to northeast. The climate is temperate continental.

History

The village was settled by

Balkan Mountains The Balkan mountain range is located in the eastern part of the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It is conventionally taken to begin at the peak of Vrashka Chuka on the border between Bulgaria and Serbia. It then runs f ...

colonists from

Vratsa Province Vratsa Province ( ''Oblast Vraca'', former name Vraca okrug) is a Bulgarian province located in the northwestern part of the country, between Danube river in the north and Stara Planina mountain in the south. It is named after its main town: ...

after the

Liberation of Bulgaria The Liberation of Bulgaria is the historical process as a result of the Bulgarian Revival. In Bulgarian historiography, the liberation of Bulgaria refers to those events of the Tenth Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) that led to the re-establishme ...

in 1878. Prior to that, following the

Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...

and more specifically the

Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855) The siege of Sevastopol (at the time called in English the siege of Sebastopol) lasted from October 1854 until September 1855, during the Crimean War. The allies ( French, Sardinian, Ottoman, and British) landed at Eupatoria on 14 September ...

, the Ottoman government settled

Crimean Tatars Crimean Tatars (), or simply Crimeans (), are an Eastern European Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group and nation indigenous to Crimea. Their ethnogenesis lasted thousands of years in Crimea and the northern regions along the coast of the Blac ...

and

Circassians The Circassians or Circassian people, also called Cherkess or Adyghe (Adyghe language, Adyghe and ), are a Northwest Caucasian languages, Northwest Caucasian ethnic group and nation who originated in Circassia, a region and former country in t ...

in the area. They lived in dugouts and adobe houses, but were forced out of the country in 1878. After the Liberation, around 100 families of settlers from Kunino colonized the area; other Bulgarian colonists soon arrived. The colonists included 83 Banat Bulgarian families from

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

who arrived in 1894. The Orthodox church of

Archangel Michael Michael, also called Saint Michael the Archangel, Archangel Michael and Saint Michael the Taxiarch is an archangel and the warrior of God in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The earliest surviving mentions of his name are in third- and second ...

was built in 1912–1915 and inaugurated in 1920; according to accounts of elderly people, the architect was from

Macedonia Macedonia (, , , ), most commonly refers to: * North Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe, known until 2019 as the Republic of Macedonia * Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity * Macedonia (Greece), a former administr ...

. The village also has a small

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

Banat Banat ( , ; ; ; ) is a geographical and Historical regions of Central Europe, historical region located in the Pannonian Basin that straddles Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe. It is divided among three countries: the eastern part lie ...

ian") church of the Holy Mother of God serving the Banat Bulgarian community. The Father Paisius school's current building was opened in 1934.

Honour

Bregare Point in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

is named after the village.

Notable people

* Georgi Dimitrov Mihailov – member of the 38-th National parliament.

Gallery

File:Ban-tsurkva.jpg, Roman Catholic ("Banatian") church File:Bregare daskalo.jpg, School in Bregare

References

{{reflist Villages in Pleven Province