Kakrina Inn

Kakrina Inn is a historic site in the village of Kakrina, Lovech Municipality, Bulgaria. It occupies an important place in the history of Vasil Levski and the Internal Revolutionary Organisation, as well as in the period of the liberation struggles.
Vasil Levski stayed at the inn in Kakrina and was captured there by Turkish policemen on the morning of 27 December 1872. The site became a principal meeting place for the Lovech Local Revolutionary Committee, formed at Levski's suggestion. Hristo Tsonev, known as Latinetsa, a local man and associate of the Apostle, became the innkeeper. Meetings and activities of the Internal Revolutionary Organisation were arranged here.
Vasil Levski and his two companions were captured at Kakrina Inn by the Turkish police from Lovech. After Levski was hanged, his companions were released and returned to Lovech. Following these events, the inn was abandoned and was destroyed by fire in the late nineteenth century. Only the foundations remained.
Professor Dr Paraskev Stoyanov and Nikola Tsvyatkov visited the ruins in the summer of 1901 and made an architectural record of the foundations. On 26 December 1901, residents of Lovech and Kakrina then placed a commemorative plaque at the site of Levski's capture.
In 1924 a committee was established to restore the Vasil Levski memorial house in Kakrina, and in 1926 the foundation stone was laid. Funding came from the Pleven District Council, Lovech Municipality and private individuals.
Kakrina Inn reopened on 10 May 1931 and became Bulgaria's first museum dedicated to Vasil Levski. Its exhibition has historical and ethnographic value. On 17 February 1997, severe weather brought down the centuries-old elm that had witnessed Levski's capture, but specialists from the Regional Museum of History in Lovech restored and conserved it. Kakrina Inn thus remains an important historic site preserved for future generations.