The castle of king Ivan Shishman

The medieval Shishmanovo Kale castellum (small fortress) was built on the right bank of the Iskar River, on the ridge of the "Shishmanets" height southwest of the village of Lyutibrod. The castellum was erected in the 12th century on a rocky hill, which is currently overgrown with trees and bushes. The access to the hill is from the east, through a steep saddle where the old road to the Cherepish Monastery passes. The north and southwest slopes of the hill are sheer cliffs and rock groups. The castellum occupies the highest part of the hill and has the shape of a triangle with broken sides. The entrance to the fortress is from the eastern tip of the triangle, and the terrain has a slope to the northwest. The dimensions are 65x50x35m and an area of ​​0,11 ha. A fortress rubble masonry wall built of local stone, bonded with strong white mortar, can still be seen from the northeast. It has been preserved to a height of up to 1.5 m and a length of 10-15 m. Its faces are built of stones arranged in rows, and the filling is with quarry stones., Only the foundations of the defensive walls in the southeast, where they were the thickest (1.8-2.0 m), have been preserved. On the other sides, the fortification relied on sheer cliffs up to 30-40 m high.

• read more

  The only fortress tower was located at the most accessible point of the fortress wall, from the east at the very corner. It is external to the wall and is assumed to have a rectangular plan, built directly on the bedrock without foundations. For this reason only the foundations of the two transverse walls that connected it to the main wall remain from the tower nowadays. The rest of it collapsed or was probably destroyed when the fortress was captured. The site had three entrances, the main one being located on the southeast wall, right next to the tower that defended it. Most certainly the door was a small opening formed directly in the wall, at a height of 2-3 m above the surrounding terrain. The door was reached by a wooden ladder attached to the wall, which allowed only one person to stand in front of it. The other two entrances were emergency, cleverly hidden in the folds of the fortification and served for an invisible exit from the fortress. One was located at the southeasternmost end of the fortress and was cleverly hidden between two stone ridges. It was half-buried in the terrain and provided a secret exit from the fortress. A barely noticeable path leads from there down the seemingly inaccessible slope straight to the river. The third entrance is cleverly hidden in a small thoroughfare cave, which is in the form of a well inside the fortress and the exit of this cave is outside the wall among inaccessible rocks which protect the fortification from the north. The entire terrain of the fortification is densely built-up, and the foundations of numerous buildings are visible. Remains of household ceramics, as well as tegulas (flat ceramic tiles) are found everywhere. Many remains of tegulas lie near the fortress tower, which suggests that its platform was covered. The site had a direct visual connection with Koritengrad, as together they guarded the two banks of the Iskar River and the passage through the mountain. The fortification existed until the 14th century, when it was probably captured along with the Koritengrad fortress by the Ottoman invaders.