Klokotnitsa

Klokotnica (Bulgarian: Клокотница) is a village in southern Bulgaria near Haskovo. It has a population of 619 people (as of June, 2005). The village is famous for the great battle on 9 March 1230, between the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Asen II and the Byzantine Greek despot Theodore Komnin of Epirus. After the battle, Bulgaria became the biggest medieval country on the Balkan peninsula, stretching between the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea and the Adriatic Sea. To mark the victory, the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Asen II built the SS. Forty Martyrs Church in Veliko Tarnovo and put a stone column in it. A small relief by the E-80 international road commemorates the battle.