Vasil Levski was born Vasil Ivanov Kunchev on 18 July [O.S. 6 July] 1837 in the town of Karlovo, within the Ottoman Empire’s European province of Rumelia. He was the namesake of his maternal uncle, Archimandrite (superior abbot) Vasil (Василий, Vasiliy). Levski’s parents, Ivan Kunchev and Gina Kuncheva (née Karaivanova), came from a family of clergy and craftsmen and were members of the emerging Bulgarian middle class. An eminent but struggling local craftsman, Ivan Kunchev died in 1844. Levski had two younger brothers, Hristo and Petar, and an older sister, Yana; another sister, Maria, died during childhood.

Levski began his education at a school in Karlovo, studying homespun tailoring as a local craftsman’s apprentice. In 1855, Levski’s uncle Basil—archimandrite and envoy of the Hilandar monastery—took him to Stara Zagora, where he attended school and worked as Basil’s servant. Afterward, Levski joined a clerical training course. On 7 December 1858, he became an Orthodox monk in the Sopot monastery under the religious name Ignatius (Игнатий, Ignatiy) and was promoted in 1859 to hierodeacon, which later inspired one of Levski’s informal nicknames, The Deacon (Дякона, Dyakona).

Inspired by Georgi Sava Rakovski’s revolutionary ideas, Levski left for the Serbian capital Belgrade during the spring of 1862. In Belgrade, Rakovski had been assembling the First Bulgarian Legion, a military detachment formed by Bulgarian volunteers and revolutionary workers seeking the overthrow of Ottoman rule. Abandoning his service as a monk, Levski enlisted as a volunteer. At the time, relations between the Serbs and their Ottoman suzerains were tense. During the Battle of Belgrade in which Turkish forces entered the city, Levski and the Legion distinguished themselves in repelling them. Further militant conflicts in Belgrade were eventually resolved diplomatically, and the First Bulgarian Legion was disbanded under Ottoman pressure on 12 September 1862. His courage during training and fighting earned him his nickname Levski (“Lionlike”). After the legion’s disbandment, Levski joined Ilyo Voyvoda’s detachment at Kragujevac, but returned to Rakovski in Belgrade after discovering that Ilyo’s plans to invade Bulgaria had failed.

In the spring of 1863, Levski returned to Bulgarian lands after a brief stay in Romania. His uncle Basil reported him as a rebel to the Ottoman authorities, and Levski was imprisoned in Plovdiv for three months, but released due to the help of the doctor R. Petrov and the Russian vice-consul Nayden Gerov. On Easter 1864, Levski officially relinquished his religious office. From May 1864 until March 1866, he worked as a teacher in Voynyagovo near Karlovo; while there, he supported and gave shelter to persecuted Bulgarians and organised patriotic groups among the population. His activity caused suspicion among the Ottoman authorities, and he was forced to move. From the spring of 1866 to the spring of 1867, he taught in Enikyoy and Kongas, two Northern Dobruja villages near Tulcea.

In November 1866, Levski visited Rakovski in Iaşi. Two revolutionary bands led by Panayot Hitov and Filip Totyu had been inciting the Bulgarian diaspora community in Romania to invade Bulgaria and organise anti-Ottoman resistance. On the recommendation of Rakovski, Vasil Levski was selected as the standard-bearer of Hitov’s detachment. In April 1867, the band crossed the Danube at Tutrakan, moved through the Ludogorie region and reached the Balkan Mountains. After skirmishing, the band fled to Serbia through Pirot in August.

Rejecting the emigrant detachment strategy for internal propaganda, Levski undertook his first tour of the Bulgarian lands to engage all layers of Bulgarian society for a successful revolution. On 11 December 1868, he travelled by steamship from Turnu Măgurele to Istanbul, the starting point of a trek that lasted until 24 February 1869, when Levski returned to Romania. During this canvassing and reconnaissance mission, Levski is thought to have visited Plovdiv, Perushtitsa, Karlovo, Sopot, Kazanlak, Sliven, Tarnovo, Lovech, Pleven and Nikopol, establishing links with local patriots.

Despite insufficient documentation of Levski’s activities in 1870, it is known that he spent a year and a half establishing a wide network of secret committees in Bulgarian cities and villages. The network, the Internal Revolutionary Organisation (IRO), was centred around the Lovech Central Committee, also called “BRCC in Bulgaria” or the “provisional government”. The goal of the committees was to prepare for a coordinated uprising. The network of committees was at its densest in the central Bulgarian regions, particularly around Sofia, Plovdiv and Stara Zagora. Revolutionary committees were also established in some parts of Macedonia, Dobruja and Strandzha and around the more peripheral urban centres Kyustendil, Vratsa and Vidin. IRO committees purchased armaments and organised detachments of volunteers. According to one study, the organisation had just over 1,000 members in the early 1870s. Most members were intellectuals and traders, though all layers of Bulgarian society were represented.

In that situation, Levski’s assistant Dimitar Obshti robbed an Ottoman postal convoy in the Arabakonak pass on 22 September 1872, without approval from Levski or the leadership of the movement. While the robbery was successful and provided IRO with 125,000 groschen, Obshti and the other perpetrators were soon arrested. The preliminary investigation and trial revealed the revolutionary organisation’s size and its close relations with BRCC. Obshti and other prisoners made a full confession and revealed Levski’s leading role.

Initially taken to Tarnovo for interrogation, Levski was sent to Sofia on 4 January. There, he was taken to trial. While he acknowledged his identity, he did not reveal his accomplices or details related to his organisation, taking full blame. Ottoman authorities sentenced Levski to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on 18 February 1873 in Sofia, where the Monument to Vasil Levski now stands. The location of Levski’s grave is uncertain, but in the 1980s, writer Nikolay Haytov campaigned for the Church of St. Petka of the Saddlers as Levski’s burial place, which the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences concluded as possible yet unverifiable.

The life of Vasil Levski has been widely featured in Bulgarian literature and popular culture. Poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev dedicated his last work to Levski, “The Hanging of Vasil Levski”. The poem, an elegy, was probably written in late 1875. Prose and poetry writer Ivan Vazov devoted an ode to the revolutionary. Eponymously titled “Levski”, it was published as part of the cycle Epic of the Forgotten. Levski has also inspired works by writers Hristo Smirnenski and Nikolay Haytov, among others. Songs devoted to Levski can be found in the folklore tradition of Macedonia as well. In February 2007, a nationwide poll conducted as part of the Velikite Balgari (“The Great Bulgarians”) television show, a local spin-off of 100 Greatest Britons, named Vasil Levski the greatest Bulgarian of all time.

Vasil Levski’s hanging is observed annually across Bulgaria on 19 February instead of 18 February, due to the erroneous calculation of 19th-century Julian calendar dates after Bulgaria adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1916. Although the location of Levski’s grave has not been determined, some of his hair is on exhibit at the National Museum of Military History. After Levski gave up monkhood in 1863, he shaved his hair, which his mother and later his sister Yana preserved. Levski’s personal items—such as his silver Christian cross, his copper water vessel, his Gasser revolver, made in Austria–Hungary in 1869, and the shackles from his imprisonment in Sofia—are also exhibited in the military history museum, while Levski’s sabre can be seen in the Lovech regional museum.