Transfiguration Monastery

The Transfiguration Monastery or the Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration of God is an Eastern Orthodox monastery located in the Dervent gorge of the Yantra River. It lies near the village of Samovodene, seven kilometres north of Veliko Tarnovo, in central northern Bulgaria. It is one of the five stauropegic monasteries of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

It is thought that the monastery was founded in the 11th century AD as a cloister of the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos. In 1360, when Tarnovo was the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire and the traditions of hesychasm were popular in Bulgaria, it became an autonomous monastery on the order of Tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria. This is legendarily tied to the charity of Ivan Alexander's second wife Sarah-Theodora and their son Ivan Shishman, a reason to also call the monastery Sarah's or Shishman's monastery.