The rocky monasteries are the unique religious monuments been among the most interesting historical sites in Bulgaria. Time was far from merciful for them: the wooden parts vanished, the murals have been destroyed, the inscriptions - erased. Archaeology and imagination are the only way to bring them back to what they used to be in the days of their tacit glory, when in the period between the 12th and 14th centuries Hesychasm thrives here and was imposed as an official dogma of the Eastern Orthodoxy.