The village of Katina

The village of Katina is in the Sofia region, 16 km from Sofia. According to the legend the village is named after the courageous girl Katina, who brought along her fellow-villagers here in the 1st century. For the first time the name of the village was mentioned in the middle of the 15th century, when the Ottomans prepared the tax registers of the town of Sredets and the surrounding villages. The lack of researches led to obscurities about the historical development of the village for long periods of time. The information for the Katina’s history is collected from the local legends and the existing written records. Some of them are the stone crosses around the village. Their inscriptions are typical of the Bulgarian writing in the 17th and the 18th century. It is supposed that they are made as an expression of respect for the ancestors of the old Katina families. The most famous sightseeing are the Pyramids of Katina. These rock formations were formed as a result of the erosion. The most interesting are the pyramids in the valley of Golemia Dol (The Big Glen), which in the past reached more than 30 metres in height. In the last years the natural forestation leads to decreasing of the sizes as well as the number of the pyramids.