1.The Hermits of the Lom
In the cliffs above the river Rusenski Lom, near today's village of Ivanovo, a cave monastic complex arose as early as the thirteenth century — a whole lavra of cells, chapels and churches carved into the sheer walls of the canyon. Monastic life here continued the tradition of the Bulgarian hermits who sought the solitude of mountains and rocks. Nearby, on the same river, lay the large town of Cherven.
2.The Monastery of Ivan Asen II
The monastery's life was closely bound up with Joachim — a monk who in 1234, after the death of the Tarnovo archbishop Basil, was elected head of the Bulgarian church. He went to Nicaea and received his consecration from Patriarch Germanos, and after the recognition of the patriarchate in 1235 he became the first patriarch of Tarnovo of the Second Empire. His Life relates that Tsar Ivan Asen II took a great interest in the rock complex, and scholars regard him as the founder of the monastery dedicated to the Archangel Michael.
The church of this monastery is identified with the so-called "Buried Church". Its frescoes, dated to the time of Ivan Asen II, develop two themes of royal ideology — "The tsar and his coronation" and "The tsar triumphant" — the same ones depicted on the tsar's gold coin and gold seal. Badly damaged scenes have been convincingly read as episodes from the life of Joshua, including the appearance before Jericho of "the captain of the Lord's host" with a drawn sword — a fitting image for a ruler who saw himself as a victor led by God.
3.The Inscriptions
The rock churches are covered with inscriptions. Some are the signatures of scribes: in a cave with two graves is carved "the grammarian Dobrota, a great sinner, wrote this", and on the walls of the so-called "Baptistery" are the names of the grammarian Dan and of Detko and Radoslav, probably contemporaries. Others have been read as evidence of the last years of Tsar George I Terter: according to Yordan Andreev the town he governed was Cherven, and the tsar himself became a monk shortly before his death in one of the Ivanovo rock monasteries and was buried there. One inscription also speaks of a man who came "from Romania" — from the Byzantine lands — in the years when Bulgarians from Thrace were fleeing north from Byzantine oppression.
4.Ivan Alexander and "the Church"
In the fourteenth century the complex was again at the centre of royal attention. Tsar Ivan Alexander restored or richly endowed the so-called "Church" — one of the most interesting rock churches at Ivanovo. His donor portrait, now very poorly preserved, is painted there; among the tsar's inscriptions listed by scholars is also the one from the church at Ivanovo. The frescoes of this time, with their expressive, almost theatrical compositions, are among the peaks of the Tarnovo school of painting.