1.The Fortress on the Hisarya
Medieval Lovech lay on the rocky hill in today's Varosha quarter, an irregular height that falls steeply to the river Osam. The builders made use of its natural defences: where the cliffs made the town inaccessible, no wall was built at all. On the Lovech Hisarlak a feudal complex has been excavated — a castle like the one at Cherven — with small open squares left around it where people could gather. The street beside it is one of the few medieval streets in the Bulgarian lands reinforced with laid flagstones.
2.The Three-Month Siege (1188)
Lovech entered the history of the Second Empire in the first years of the revolt. In the spring of 1188 Isaac II Angelos marched once more against the "Mysians" and, as Choniates tersely writes, spent three whole months with them, labouring hard to take the fortress called Lovech. In the end he abandoned the undertaking unfinished and returned to Constantinople.
The emperor did not leave empty-handed, though: in circumstances Choniates does not specify, he captured Asen's wife — Elena, later a nun under the name Evgenia — and took the tsar's younger brother Kaloyan as a hostage. It is usually assumed that the campaign ended in the so-called Peace of Lovech, by which Byzantium recognised the restored state de facto. Ivan Božilov stresses, however, that Choniates' text does not allow that reading — it speaks only of a failed siege and of captives.
3.The Appanage of the Despot Ivan Alexander
In the thirteenth century Lovech grew into a large town in the interior of northern Bulgaria; in 1278, during the war with Ivaylo, the Byzantines sent a detachment through Lovech towards Vidin. Its real moment came in the 1320s. After Michael III Shishman took the throne in 1323 he gave his nephew Ivan Alexander the rank of despot and an appanage centred on Lovech.
The note in the so-called Lovech Miscellany shows the young despot's self-confidence. In it he is called "the pious despot Alexander" and Lovech "the God-protected city"; his son and Archbishop Symeon are also named. The position of the lord of Lovech was strengthened by his marriage to Theodora, daughter of the Wallachian voivode Basarab. It was at Lovech, probably around 1323–1324, that his firstborn son Michael Asen, the future co-ruler, was born.
By the end of his uncle's reign Ivan Alexander was already among the first men of the realm: Stefan Dušan's Code names him, together with Tsar Michael and Belaur, as taking part in the battle of Velbazhd in 1330, where his father-in-law Basarab also fought. After the coup in the spring of 1331 the despot of Lovech became tsar in Tarnovo, and the town lost its status as an appanage.
4.After 1331
In the mid-fourteenth century Lovech was probably one of the administrative centres of northern Bulgaria, alongside Nikopol and Drastar. Its importance endured even after it fell under Ottoman rule at the end of the century.