Pass in the Balkan Mountains on the Bulgarian side

Description

Featured in the 1836 collaborative work of Thomas Allom and Robert Walsh, this steel engraving depicts a steep and magnificent mountain pass on the Bulgarian side of the Balkan Mountains. While deep valleys and imposing mountain peaks rising to the sky dominate the background, travelers advancing on horseback along the challenging and rocky paths by the river are illustrated in the foreground. Although reflecting European Romanticism's view of nature, the artwork is an aesthetic document of the challenging yet continuously functioning historical caravan routes in the Ottoman Empire's Roumelian territories and human travel resilience in the face of nature.