Obshtina Batak (Batak Municipality)

The lands of Batak region have been inhabited since ancient times. Professor Yosif Shopov found in 1958, in Kremenete locality a find dating from the old stone age and only several years later - another find in Slancheva Polyana locality.
These lands either inhabited or passed by Thracians, Romans, Slavs, Proto-Bulgarians, Ottomans and Bulgarians still preserve the heritage of their civilizations. There are 20 Thracian, Thracian-Roman, Byzantium and Slav fortresses as well as more than 10 churches and monasteries and many Thracian tumuli, Roman bridges, mines, mills and other archaeological findings registered in Batak region.
Until the 1st century BC when the Romans conquered the Balkan Peninsular the Northern Thrace and Western Rhodopes were inhabited by the warlike Thracian tribe Bessae. According to the father of history – Herodotus the Bessae possessed the well-known sanctuary of God Dionysus. The holy place of the Bessae became famous when Alexander the Great and the father of the great Roman emperor Octavian Augustus – Gaius Octavianus passed by.
During the Slav invasion Byzantine Empire lost the stable direct control over the Western Rhodopi though the strategic roads in the northern and southern mountain foot (from Salonika through the Aegean Sea to Constantinople) were in its hands.