Madara Rider

There are a lot of stories about horsemen: the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the headless horseman, an horseman killing a  dragon, an horseman who gives his cloak to a beggar... And there is the Madara Rider, chased by a dog and killing a lion

Madara Rider

The Madara Rider, representing the figure of a knight triumphing over a lion, is carved into a 100-m-high cliff near the village of Madara in north-east Bulgaria.

The Madara Rider is a unique relief, an exceptional work of art, created during the first years of the formation of the Bulgarian State, at the beginning of the 8th century. It is the only relief of its kind, having no parallel in Europe. It has survived in its authentic state, with no alternation in the past or the present.

It is outstanding not only as a work of Bulgarian sculpture, with its characteristically realist tendencies, but also as a piece of historical source material dating from the earliest years of the establishment of the Bulgarian state. The inscriptions around the relief are, in fact, a chronicle of important events concerning the reigns of very famous Khans: Tervel, Kormisos and Omurtag. - in: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/43