The town of Malko Turnovo is situated at 340 m above sea level. It has a population of 3527 inhabitants (2003) and is the only town in the Bulgarian part of Strandja mountain (except for the coastal towns). It is located at about 80 km South of Bourgas, 58 km South-West of Tzarevo, 470 km South-East of Sofia and just 5 km North from the Bulgarian - Turkish border. The settlement has existed since Antiquity as a mining establishment and probably as a road station and as a market (emporion) in Central Strandja. Excavation works have proved the existence of several cultural layers from different ages. In all five parts of the Malko Turnovo mining field there are traces witnessing the existence of metallurgical activities since the Antiquity. Some of the finds are preserved in the Museum of Archaeology in Bourgas. According to the historians the settlement under the present-day Malko Turnovo was also a center of rich spiritual culture. It is also the place, where the highest number of epigraphs has been found. All these inscriptions are written in an elegant urbanistic style, and some of them are in verse. During the Turkish yoke the local population mainly developed cattle breeding. The sheep and the goats reached record numbers of more than 20000 heads. At this time Malko Turnovo used to be a district centre, and very interesting is the fact that in the foreign administrative systems (the Turkish, and later, for a short period - the Russian), the town used to have a higher rank than the one it was given by the Bulgarian state. One revolutionary act of the people of Malko Turnovo left bright traces in the Bulgarian struggle for liberation. That is the so called Saravigjuva Affair, named after one of the "muhtars" against whose tax arbitrariness the population raised in 1875. The participation of the people of Malko Turnovo in the Preobrazhensko rising is connected with the activities of the bands of George Kondolov, Mihail Gerdjikov and George pop Aianov. The presence of big Turkish battalion in the town made it impossible for the rebels to conquer the town. The town was liberated after the glorious march of the Bulgarian army during the Balkan war in 1912.