Стъпката на Крали Марко
No licensed photograph yetWe have no photograph we may publish for this site, so the interpretive 3D view leads instead.
Overview
About this site
Overview
The Footprint of Krali Marko (Стъпката на Крали Марко) is a prehistoric cult installation at the foot of the Belasitsa mountain, next to the village of Gabrene in Petrich municipality, Blagoevgrad Province, Bulgaria, in the locality Sariev kamak. It is a basin cut into a rock and forms part of an ancient sanctuary.
It was found in early spring 2012 by a scientific expedition of the South-West University Neofit Rilski led by Professor Vasil Markov, whose team dated the cult place to between the first and fourth centuries AD.
Read on Wikipedia2 min readCC BY-SA 4.0
Article
Стъпката на Крали Марко
The sanctuary consists of a rock that was held to be divine in prehistoric times and on which two small basins are cut.
DescriptionSources for this section
Sources for this section
The sanctuary consists of a rock that was held to be divine in prehistoric times and on which two small basins are cut. One has the shape of a huge human footprint and the other is round. Local people have also found other objects while working the fields near Gabrene, among them so-called vrachvi (pithoi).
FolkloreSources for this section
Sources for this section
The name of the site is linked to the folk epic of Krali Marko. According to legends told by the local population, one of the two altars is the Footprint of Krali Marko and the other is the footprint of his horse Sharkoliya. According to Professor Markov, the legendary hero stepped beneath the Belasitsa mountain, where the stone lies, and left his other footprint in the Ograzhden mountain, so that, in his reading, Krali Marko marks the holy places of the Thracians.
NameSources for this section
Sources for this section
The Footprint of Krali Marko is a common medieval name for prehistoric cult sites in present-day Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Footprints of this name have been registered and catalogued by archaeologists near the villages of Chokoba (Sliven Province), Mechkul (Blagoevgrad Province), on the cult territory of the Sveta Amina sanctuary, and Buzovgrad (Stara Zagora Province), next to the Buzovo kale fortress. Others are near the town of Rakitovo (Pazardzhik Province), in an unexplored Thracian cult locality, at Hasara near Stalevo (Haskovo Province), under the peak Golyam Hasar, at Chernichevo (Kardzhali Province), where the spring of Krali Marko is known as Likuuto vrishte, and at the Vuchanski kamak near the Pchelina reservoir, village of Lobosh (Pernik Province).
ConservationSources for this section
Sources for this section
The site of the sanctuary has been cleared by local people, who hope that the discovery will attract tourists to the village. It is reported to have drawn the attention of visitors from North Macedonia and Greece.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Thracian rock sanctuaries of Bulgaria
In the Eastern Rhodope and Strandzha mountains of Bulgaria, rocks have been cut, carved and used as sanctuaries for thousands of years, and the Atlas lists many of them as "megaliths". The Thracians were an Indo-European-speaking people who inhabited large parts of south-eastern Europe in ancient times, including modern Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia, northern Greece and European Turkey, and they reused many of the sites. Strandzha has a large concentration of ruins of Thracian sanctuaries, sacrificial altars and dolmens.
Perperikon, in the Eastern Rhodope Mountains 15 kilometres north-east of Kardzhali, is an ancient Thracian city on a rocky hill 470 metres high, thought to have been a sacred place; it is described as the largest megalith ensemble site in the Balkans. In the Middle Ages it served as a fortress. Beglik Tash, a prehistoric rock sanctuary on the southern Black Sea coast north of Primorsko, was reused by Thracian tribes in the Iron Age.
Many of the places listed as megaliths here are natural rock formations. Beglik Tash is a natural rock formation of megaliths of hardened magma, from a volcano of the Mesozoic era; most of the megaliths have traces of carving for Thracian rituals, and there are the remains of a labyrinth and a "Thracian sun-clock" formed of huge stones, as well as a 150-ton rock. It is often hard to tell where nature ends and human work begins.
Dating depends on the finds in the few excavated parts, and most sites are listed with a broad range.
When visiting, look for traces of carving on the rock, and for steps and niches.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Thracians, Wikipedia: Perperikon, Wikipedia: Beglik Tash, Wikipedia: Strandzha · CC BY-SA 4.0
Where it stands
Bulgaria
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 41°22′19″ N, 22°58′26″ EFor a GPS or map app: 41.37200, 22.97400
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
1 source behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q20498331wikidata.org
Report a correctionWrong date, name, photograph or source? Tell us and it will be put right.
Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Стъпката на Крали Марко (Габрене)" (Bulgarian), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; authors are listed in the page history. Reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · Edit history and authors