2 Leva Tsarevets Castle

Issued as part of Bulgaria's 1300th anniversary of statehood series — a propaganda push by the Zhivkov regime to anchor communist rule to medieval Bulgarian glory — this coin draws on the Tsarevets fortress in Veliko Tarnovo, capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire from 1185 to 1393. The Ottoman siege that ended that empire in 1393 lasted three months; the Patriarch Euthymius was exiled rather than executed, an unusual mercy that became a cornerstone of Bulgarian national memory.