10 Leva Nestinarstvo

Nestinarstvo is the Strandzha mountain tradition of ritual fire-walking practiced by a small number of villages in southeastern Bulgaria and across the border in Greek Thrace, recognized by UNESCO on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009. The practice predates Ottoman rule and survived centuries of suppression — first by the Orthodox Church, which viewed it with suspicion, and later by the Communist government, which dismissed it as superstition incompatible with state atheism.

Bulgaria has issued collector silver consistently around UNESCO-recognized traditions since the mid-2000s, making this part of a deliberate cultural documentation program rather than a one-off commemorative.