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Bansko is not just a small town which you visit,
 it differs from all towns you have ever seen. Nowhere else there are such beautiful gates, stone walls, men's songs and women's dresses. Here you can hear the most melodic language and eat the most delicious food. The wine produced in Bansko is a divine drink for the soul. The people in Bansko are mountaineers. They are strange people looking upon life differently and perceive the world in their own way. No one can answer for sure how and when this town escaped from the mainstream of life and chose its own way of development. Probably some explanation is its outstanding environment.
Surrounded by three mountain ranges, multiple rivers, meadows and gaint nut trees, Bansko is situated in an unique place which is not just an imitation of the Swiss Alps nor the Caucasian mountain ranges.
Today, archeologists say that the arrival of the first inhabitants here to foot of Pirin mountain range occurred 3,500 years ago.  Their traces are already covered with thick layer of earth and grain forests. Snow storms, rocky peaks and dark, cool sports have trained those ancient people to survive, sacrifice and resist to hunger and thirst for a long time. The mountain range was precious for them. A new beginning for Bansko was the merge of the multiple settlements in the second millennium A.D. the reason was need for protection from the Asian invaders and the crucial centuries that followed, clearly showed how important this action really was. In many battles during the Turkish yoke the people of Bansko proved themselves to be independent.
The relief is highly varied, relatively plain in the river valleys, hilly at the mountain foothills, mountainous and alpine in the mountain uplands.
Bansko municipality includes some parts of the biosphere reservation Bayuvi Dupki-Djindjiritsa and National Park Pirin, reservation Yulen, 11 noteworthy places of nature, and 11 historic sights. The following objects of nature are declared to be under protection: the waterfalls Bandera’s leap, Demian’s leap, Yulen’s leap, Wedding Party cliff formation, Banderitsa cave, 7-century trees, among which is the Baikusha’s white fir as well.
The most impressive forms of the relief are the high cliff peaks, deep bottomless precipices, tens of big and smaller circles, at the bottoms of which there are 186 crystal clear lakes.
During the last 10 years Bansko has won recognition as the fourth winter centre in Bulgaria. The city has the highest dynamics of private investments in the tourist sector.
We should especially point out the fact that our investors have chosen an 'investments on the green' approach, i.e. they start from a bare meadow.
The tendency of the development of the hotel-keeping business is to build up sites, which correspond to the European standards in the business of tourism.
It is a regional tourist organization that was created to support the development of tourism in the Pirin parts, a member of the National Council of Tourism and Bulgarian Association of Alternative Tourism (BAAT). It unites municipalities from Southwest Bulgaria, local tourist organizations, representatives of the business of tourism, etc. It provides information and does services in popularizing and advertising the opportunities of tourism in the Pirin parts and in offering tourism.
Tel. 073/35458, 36795, 81458
Tel. 07443/5048 - Tourist Information Centre – Bansko
Tel. 07443/2428 - National Park Pirin
Today’s administrative centre of Bansko municipality is in the place of a settlement that was inhabited in succession by Thracians, Romans, Byzantines and Slavs. The remains of ancient fortresses, Thracian tumuli, medieval colonies, consecrated grounds, churches and chapels within the town earthwork testify to several historical epochs. In the Old Town site, about 4 km to the southwest of the city and in the Yulen site (along the river Damianitsa downstream) there are some remains of ancient fortresses. Thracian burial mounds were discovered close to the Old Town site. In the region of Dobrokiovitsa remnants of medicine substances, a set of bronze medical tools, etc. were found in a burial of the 2nd c. The medieval settlement was likely to be in the region of Sveta Troitsa. The remains of the late medieval single-nave St. George and St. Elijah churches, monuments of culture, are to the southeast of Bansko.
In the 9th-10th c. Bansko stood out as a settlement by grouping into several districts. In the middle of the 16th c. it was mentioned in the Ottoman register of sheep-breeders under the name of Baniska. Until the 18th c. the natives of Bansko were predominantly cattle-breeders and craftsmen, who relied on the vast pastures and rich woods. A great number of water mills, sawmills, fulling mills, workshops for hide tanning, etc. were built along the river Glazne.
Manufactured goods of wood, leather and iron had an extensive market along the White Sea, in Arabia and India. Horse caravans brought back cotton, fish, tobacco, olives, and raw and prepared skins. Ambitious natives of Bansko set up merchant offices in Budapest, Vienna, Leipzig, Marseille and London. Bansko was distinguished as an important mercantile and craftsman centre of a new, revival type. Large clans became wealthy; they carried over to their motherland not only the culture of the countries they visited but also they sent their children to study abroad. Coming into contact with the rich European culture had an extraordinary fruitful influence on the spiritual progress of the natives of Bansko.
The lifestyle of people improved; they built strong two-storeyed fortress houses of stone with high walls and heavy solid gates, with long eaves of black fir. This style of architecture reached a full bloom during the Revival. The spacious rooms were painted with variegated designs of worldly and religious subjects, and the ceilings were fretted. The earliest houses of Hadjivalcho, Hadjirusko and Velian were protected by internal coverts and loopholes. A functionally clarified composition and rich artistic ornaments characterize the houses of Sirle, Todi, Buine, Zagorche, Djidje, Zlati, Koyu, Stefan, etc.
Behind the thick walls life of numerous household was running on; occasionally conspiratorial meetings of bearded rebels and leaders disturbed it. In 1896 at such a meeting in the house of Sirle, Gotse Delchev, then a chief teacher in Bansko, founded a revolutionary committee of VMORO (Internal Macedonia-Odrin Revolutionary Organization) under chairman Dimitar Todev. On the 5th of September 1903 in Bansko there was held a congress of functionaries from the Razlog region of the Sersko revolutionary district for preparation of the Ilinden uprising. About 300 persons from Bansko took part in it, who were set up in six detachments under the leadership of Boris Golev, Radon Todev, Tase Furnadjiev, Milush Kolchagov, Kostadin Kolchagov and Save Mehomiyski. After the uprising was defeated a part of the population fled to a liberated Bulgaria.
Bansko was liberated from Ottoman yoke on the 5th (18th) of October 1912, on the day the Balkan war was declared.
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