The Eastern Rhodope is a place on the Balkan Peninsula where the most megalithic monuments of ancient Thrace are found. These monumental structures are impressive in their scale.
Dolmens - tombs, consisting of huge stone blocks or slabs, in the Eastern Rhodopes hundreds. They are located in two distant mountain groups - in the northeast and in the south, and were dated during the Bronze Age (11-6 centuries BC). The dolmens of the southern group are better preserved, there are more than 100 of them and are located on both sides of the modern border of Bulgaria with Greece. The graves in the villages of Ostry Kamen, Harmanli, and Chernichevo, Krumovgrad are especially impressive.
The rock tombs are very original monuments of megalithic culture. So far, about 50 have been recorded, concentrated mainly in the central sections of the Eastern Rhodope. Some of them were carved directly into the rocks, others were made in the form of artificial caves, the entrances of which were covered with massive stone slabs. The architecture of the tomb near the villages of Pchelary and Ovchevo, Kyrzhali is very interesting. Unfortunately, most of the rock tombs in the Rhodope Mountains were robbed in antiquity.
The most monumental, but also the strangest and most inexplicable, are the impressive ensembles of rock-cut niches in the Eastern Rhodopes. They were carved at high altitudes on vertical surfaces of rocks and massifs and can be seen from afar, mainly on the sunny side.
Most often, niches are trapezoidal, up to 1 meter high and 40-50 centimeters deep. As a rule, in groups from 3-4 to 100, and their total number exceeds 1500. The most interesting are the complexes in the villages of Angel Voyvoda, Raven, Zhenda, Dyzhdovnitsa, Shiroko pole.
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Unlike other megalithic monuments, rock niches are not found anywhere outside the Eastern Rhodopes. Historians are unanimous that they are expressions of the worship of the sun and sacred stones. However, they do not agree on the theory of their specific purpose, since all the niches turned out to be empty. The most widespread opinion is that these were the graves in which the burial urns were placed, and the complexes represent a kind of ancient necropolis.