Tower of Kurt Pasha

The Tower of Kurt Pasha, also rendered as Kurt Pasha Tower or Kurtpashov(a) Tower, is an Ottoman-era tower house in the town of Vratsa in northwest Bulgaria. Built in the 17th century, nowadays it is used as an exhibition space and souvenir shop adjacent to the Vratsa Regional Historical Museum. Like other tower houses in the Balkans from that age, the Tower of Kurt Pasha belongs to a specific type of habitable defensive tower which emerged in parts of the Balkans during a turbulent and anarchic period in the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century. The Tower of Kurt Pasha was constructed by a local feudal lord of the period as a fortified abode for his family, collectively known as Kurtpashovtsi. A legend claims that the family stems from medieval Bulgarian nobility and, having converted to Islam under Ottoman rule, preserved its holdings in the region. The tower has a square foundation of 6 by 6 m (20 by 20 ft) and reaches 11 m (36 ft) in height. It has a total of four stories, including the basement and ground level. The two top stories were occupied by the family of the owner.