Slaveykov's Oaks

Slaveykov's Oaks are the epitome of a pleasant but little-known place steeped in history. The official name of the green area is the memorial park "Grandfather Slaveykov's place and the oak of Pencho Slaveykov". The garden with twenty-eight 300-year-old trees is located in the Lozenets district and in 1955. has been declared a cultural monument.

The Slaveykov family bought the garden in 1879, when after the Liberation they moved from Plovdiv to Sofia. Under the shadows of the centuries-old trees Pencho Slaveykov wrote some of his best poems. There is also the favorite place of the literary circle "Thought", which includes Pencho Slaveykov, Peyo Yavorov, Dr. Krastyo Krastev, Petko Todorov. Petko and Pencho Slaveykovi associate the place with personal escape, opportunity for peace, quiet and inspiration from nature.

Slaveykov sings of his love for oaks and his desire to live with them even after his death in the Psalm of the Poet, written as a letter to his beloved Mara Belcheva:

Comrade, a good end to my share of the world
you give: don't leave me to strangers,
of them to be buried with the dead
in cemeteries, weeping souls de disturb.
There on a high hill, where with you, with comrades
I liked to sit in quiet conversation dreamy,
order a tomb to be built for me there,
there the silence sings your wonderful song.