Location
The municipality of Doupnitsa is located in  Southwest Bulgaria, at the foot of the Rila mountain, at the crossroads of the roads from Sofia to Salonika and from Plovdiv to Skopje.    
The settlements of the Doupnitsa municipality are situated in the Doupnitsa Hollow, formed by the west slopes of the Rila mountain and the south slopes of the Verila mountain.    
The hollow is open eastwards and southwards of the valley of the Jerman river.

History
Traces of the Thracian culture (a mound necropolis), an antique settlement and a Roman tomb were discovered in and around the town of Doupnitsa. As a result of archaeological research in a place called Koulata (The Tower) - a hill in the north-east part of the town, from1993 to 1995, were uncovered the foundations of a fortress which existed in c. 4-5 AD. A tower for defence was erected in the middle of the  hill after which the place was named. 
The name Doupnitsa appeared for the first time in an Ottoman register from the third quarter of c. 15. 
Later descriptions of the town and its population can be found in the travel notes of   travellers who passed through it - the knight Arnold fon Harf (1499 ), Evlia Chelebi (c. 18), Hupe (c. 17), Amie Boie  (c. 19).
The economic life of Doupnitsa in the pre-National Liberation era was chiefly connected with ore-mining. As early as c. 18 there existed iron mines in the town's surroundings. A considerable amount of iron was still mined in the region in the beginning of c. 19.  
In 1660 Evlia Chelebi counted 100 shops and workshops in the town. In 1867  the teacher Doupnitsa. Bisserov wrote that they were 494, including 4 shops, 27 bakeries, 26 inns, 5 tanners' workshops, which shows the prosperity of the crafts and the economic growth of the settlement over a period of 200 years. There were 1433 houses at Bisserov's time. There existed various craft-guilds - bakers', fur-dressers', frieze-weavers', blacksmiths', builders', goat's-hair weavers'.  
The beginning of the town's industrialization was laid in the sixties and seventies of c. 19,  when three factories of the manufacture type started working - a freeze-weaving, a woodworking and a tobacco factory. The town started developing as one of the big producing-producing centres. The tobacco industry and the tobacco trade were the chief source of livelihood for a large part of the population up to the thirties of c. 20. 
The craft-guilds were rich and gave financial support to the building of churches, the maintenance of schools, etc. During the first half of c. 19 there existed in the town four churches, the Rila-Monastery Cloister and the cloisters of  the Hilendar and Zograf monasteries, and by the end of the century there were also eight schools, one of which was for girls. Along with developing their cultural and educational work the inhabitants of Doupnitsa took part in the struggle for national liberation, they joined the Volunteer Forces in the Russian-Turkish War and the subdivisions for the liberation of the town and the region under the command of Major Iv. P. Orlinski.
The socio-political life of the liberated Doupnitsa in the period from 1878 to 1912 was dominated by the idea of obtaining national unity, of supporting the Bulgarians who had remained under the power of the Sultan in Macedonia. Charities were founded. The town sheltered thousands of refugees and became one of the centres for organization and preparation of armed subdivisions for the liberation of Macedonia.
The cultural uplift of Bulgaria during that period also left its mark on Doupnitsa. The traditions that were created during the National Revival have been preserved to this day.

Rila Monastery
The Monastery of Saint John of Rila, better known as the Rila Monastery (Bulgarian: Рилски манастир, Rilski manastir) is the largest and most famous Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria. It is situated in the northwestern Rila Mountains, 117 km south of the capital Sofia in the deep valley of the Rilska River at an elevation of 1,147 m above sea level.
Founded in the 10th century, the Rila Monastery is regarded as one of Bulgaria's most important cultural, historical and architectural monuments. It is on account of this also a key tourist attraction in Bulgaria and Southeastern Europe as a whole.