TRNOVO [rIRNovo], a city and capital of a department in Bulgaria; 124 m. E.N.E. of Sofia, on the river Yantra, on the Trans-Balkan railway, which joins the Sofia-Varna line at Gorna Orehovitsa, 8 m. N. of Trnovo. Pop. (1934) 14,100. The city is remarkably situated. The Yantra runs in a deep gorge, doubling first left, then right, round two promontories, which stand like high fortresses, surrounded by water on three sides. The first of these, the Tsarevitsa, is connected with the rest of the town by a high causeway, in part a bridge ; the other, the Trapesitsa, is entirely isolated. The inhabited town covers the two sides of the roof-like ridge which terminates in the Tsarevitsa.
On the latter are a ruined tower, known as Baldwin's tower, where the Frank emperor is supposed to have been imprisoned, and behind it, the somewhat unimposing remains of the palace of the Asens (q.v.). Few of these ruins have been excavated. The Trapesitsa contains the fragments of several mediaeval churches in the Byzantine style.
Trnovo is believed to have been a Roman fortress; it was the birthplace of Tsar Sigman, and the home of the second Bulgar empire, proclaimed here 1185 by the brothers Peter and Ivan Asen, who were boyars of the Tsarevitsa and Trapesitsa. It was capital of Bulgaria 1186-1394, when it was adorned with great splendour; most of the relics were destroyed in the earthquake of 1911. It was the seat of the Bulgarian patriarchate from 1232 to its abolition in 1767. Trnovo was taken by the Turks on July 17, 1394. It remained, however, a commercial centre. It was captured by Russia in 1877. Prince Alexander of Battenberg was here proclaimed Bulgarian prince (1879). Here the Bulgarian constituent assembly sat, all meetings of the Grand Sobranye (see BULGARIA, Constitution) are held here, and the independent kingdom of Bulgaria was proclaimed in the church of the Forty Martyrs (Oct. 5, 1908). (C. A. M.) TROAD : see TROY.