Kremikovtsi ( bg, Кремиковци ) is an industrial district of

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and h ...

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...

. It is located to the northeast of the capital. The Kremikovtsi Steel Complex which is close to the neighbourhood is one of the largest industrial enterprises in Bulgaria and the

Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

. More than 20,000 people used to work there but this has been reduced to 8,500 due to higher efficiency. There has been much dispute over the future of the plant, yet no ecological sanctions have been imposed on the plant owners to bring into accord Kremikovtsi's pollution status by investing in filtering installations. Insofar, no action has been taken to either close the plant or exercise government power to control the level of harmful emissions to the air, which gave rise to concerns of corruption in the government of the Bulgarian Socialist Party's ruling coalition. Three kilometers outside the Kremikovtsi, overlooking the village from its surrounding hills, lies the Monastery of St. George the Victorious, notable for its older church's 16th century frescoes showing patron St. George as well as other saints. Kremikovtsi was first mentioned in 1452 and was in continuous existence throughout the 16th–19th centuries, as evidenced by written sources. Its name is derived from the initial placename ''*Kremikovo'' or ''*Kremik'', from the dialectal word ''kremik'' ("

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

", from

Old Bulgarian Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and othe ...

КРЄМЪІКЪ). Previously a separate village, it was merged with Sofia in 1978.

References

{{Districts of Sofia Districts of Sofia