The medieval church “Saint Nicholas” is situated in the center of the village Tsarevets, in the courtyard of the new church “Dimitrie”, surrounded by old funeral stones from the period of the Renaissance.
The legend says the fact that many years ago, when the Turks destroyed the Orthodox churches, this church was spared, in order to prove to the Bulgarians the fact that they didn’t respect the Christian saints, they took out with their swords their eyes. Later on, the villagers which love God, filled them in again with wax and although they did this thing, the “Saint Nicholas” church continued over the centuries a bastion of the Christian and national Bulgarian spirit.
The church is a basilica building without a porch. In some places, in principal, on the western façade, there are elements of wooden visible properties. In the building there are arranged the visible stone which were secondary used. On the western façade, and a half from the southern one, it was used evened stone with irregular contours on which there are engraved inscriptions.
The roof of the arch is semi cylindrical.
What it is accentuated in the brick church it is its iconostasis, the only one kept in the country in this manner. It resembles with the church “Saint Teodor Tyron and Stratilat” from Dobursko, which mixed the masonry with the iconostasis until the pictograms were directly painted on the temple.
The entire wall is written in the Orthodox canon, the mural paintings are dated back from the XVIIth century.
The church itself, as architecture and construction, can be attributed with delay in the XIVth century and the beginning of the XVth century. The church is strengthened and re-constructed after 1747 (according to the inscription from the superior stone door of the construction).
In 1844, the master Angel Simeonov from Trevnenska made the wooden sculpted iconostasis, and a local painter professor, Petko made the icons. The iconostasis no longer exists, most part of its icons are missing, and others are kept in the Archeology Museum from Sofia.
The same destiny has come upon the liturgical objects of the old temple, and upon most of the liturgical books.
Because of the public woks from the center of the village and around the new church (at 15 – 20 km south – west) repeatedly there are discovered tombs. From these principally come the jewelries which date the necropolis of “Saint Nicholas” church from the Middle Ages – the XIIIth – the XIVth century.
The medieval church “Saint Nicholas” has been declared a cultural monument of national importance in the Government Meeting 90 of 1965.
In comparison with the churches from this region of Bulgaria, it can be said the fact that “Saint Nicolas” survived the centuries as being well conserved in such a manner that besides its very good state, it is also realized the restoration and the conservation.