The book of gospels was made on the order of Tsar Ivan Alexander in 1356 and is one of the most lavishly illuminated monuments of medieval Bulgarian culture.

In 1356 the monk Simon was directed by the Tsar Ivan Alexander, who reigned between 1331 and 1371, to produce a copy of the four gospels for the royal library in Turnovo, the then capital of Bulgaria.

The manuscript consists of 286 parchment sheets with 366 water-colour miniatures. Gold leaf is copiously used in the embellishment of the illustrations and the enlarged initial letters.

The magnificent manuscript remained in the royal palace during the reign of Ivan Alexander's son, Ivan Shishman (1371-1393), until Bulgaria fell to the Turks in 1396.

After the Kingdom of Turnovo was overrun by the Ottomans, the Tetraevangelia was taken to the present-day Romanian lands. It was kept there until the 17th
century, when it was transferred to the Romanian St Paul Monastery on
Mt Athos.

In 1837 Lord Robert Curzon of Britain, a traveller and collector, found the Tetraevangelia among more than 200 Bulgarian and Serb manuscripts in the library of the St Paul Monastery on Mt Athos.

On his way home from the Orient, Lord Curzon paid a visit to the monastery and befriended the monks. One of them, whose name is not remembered, granted the Briton's request to present him with a book from the large monastery library.

This is how one of the most precious artefacts of Bulgarian mediaeval culture found its way into a private British collection. Thus, however, the precious manuscript was preserved from the fire, which in 1907 devastated the library of the St Paul Monastery.

After Lord Curzon's death in 1873, another peer took possession of the manuscript and in 1876 delivered it to the British Museum, where it remains to date.

Tsar Ivan Alexander's Tetraevangelia is not the only Bulgarian treasure to be kept in a foreign museum.

The two most valuable early Bulgarian manuscripts survive in the Vatican Apostolic Library: the oldest one, Codex Assemanianus (written in the Glagolitic), and the best-illustrated one, the Manasses Chronicle.

Hundreds of ancient inscriptions are in the holdings of the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

Painted vases discovered in the Bulgarian lands can be seen in the Louvre, in Berlin's Pergamon Museum and in Athens' National Museum.