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Monument to Vassil Levski -- the present-day Bulgarians consider him their greatest national hero of all times and epochs, was born in Karlovo, a prosperous center of craft-industry in 1837.  At the age of twenty four he took the vows of a deacon; but the lot in store for the young Bulgarian was not to be one of a monk living in resignation to the world. 

In 1862 he fled to Serbia and enlisted as a volunteer in the Bulgarian legion raised by Rakovski.  The legion took part in the Serbo-Turkish hostilities. 

Between 1862-1868 Levski participated in almost all Bulgarian armed assaults against the Ottoman empire. Unfortunately, he himself fell in the hands of the Turkish authorities who put him on trial and sentenced him to death by hanging.  Levski was sent to the gallows in Sofia in February 1873.