Ivaylovgrad

Ivaylovgrad is a town in Haskovo Province in the south of Bulgaria, set beside the river Arda in the easternmost part of the Rhodope Mountains. It is the administrative centre of the municipality of the same name, and the border with the Greek region of Evros lies only about two miles from the town centre. The Bulgarian name means city of Ivaylo, while under Ottoman rule the place was known as Ortakoy, meaning middle village. Byzantine church lists of the ninth and tenth centuries mention a bishop's seat called Lyutitsa on the site, and the Ottomans destroyed the settlement during their advance into the Balkans in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The town stayed Ottoman until the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. Nearby sights include the Ivaylovgrad Reservoir, the Roman Villa Armira of the second and third centuries, the medieval Lyutitsa fortress and the sixteenth century Aterenski bridge.