Velyova Banya

About the bath

Velyova Banya is thought to date from the middle of the 17th century. It is in the Lazhene quarter, near a large pine park and the Lukovitsa River. A legend, told in different versions, speaks of Bay Velyo, governor of the Chepino villages around 1640. He had wounds on his skin, but no treatment helped him. An old woman taught him to bathe in a pool of a warm spring. Velyo was cured, and on the site of the spring he built a bath – which is why it still bears his name. The present building dates from the 1920s. The healing properties of the spring were especially prized, and throughout the Ottoman period the bath drew the notables of the Tatar Pazardzhik district. In 1926 the bath was renovated and rebuilt by Ivan Goturanov, with two bathing sections and bathtubs added. The changing rooms were on two floors. The two pools and the basins were fed with mineral water from a spring beneath the two pools, its water running by gravity evenly into the pools and basins of both sections. In 1976 shower sections were added to the men's and women's sections, along with four more basins. The bath, which is a cultural monument, had two mirror-image rooms – a men's and a women's. Only one wing survives today; the other has been left in ruins.

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