At dawn on December 27, 1872, Turkish troops surrounded the Kakrina Inn. After a short skirmish, they captured Vasil Levski.
The previous evening, Vasil Levski, together with his companion Nikola Tsvyatkov, arrived from Lovech in Kakrina and stayed at the local inn on the outskirts of the village. The inn had been bought earlier and was used by the revolutionary figures as a place for secret meetings and during the apostles' travels around the country. The inn was run by the organization's confidant Hristo Tsonev - the Latin, recalls the website "History in Brief".
Levski passed through Kakrina to collect documents of the secret revolutionary committee, which he would later take to Romania. After the robbery of the Turkish treasury in the Arabakonash Pass at the end of September 1872, the Turkish authorities began mass arrests of people suspected of having connections with the revolutionary committees. A large number of members of the committees in Teteven, Orhaniye, Etropole and Lovech were detained. During interrogations, Dimitar Obshti made confessions that facilitated the Turkish authorities' investigation and they soon got on the trail of the Apostle. Therefore, in order to prevent the final failure of the revolutionary organization, Levski went to Lovech to preserve the organization's archives and transport them to Romania.
At dawn on December 27, in the inn in the village of Kakrina, Vasil Levski, together with Nikola Tsvyatkov and Hristo Tsonev - the Latin - were arrested by a specially sent group of police. Over the years, the moment of the Apostle's capture has become overgrown with myths, and for a large part of Bulgarians, Vasil Levski fell into the hands of the prisoners because, while jumping over the fence of the inn, he got entangled and was unable to escape.
This heroic version of the escape and the fence was first told by Nikola Tsvyatkov. After the hanging of the Apostle, Nikola Tsvyatkov and the innkeeper Hristo Tsonev were released. It was Tsvyatkov who picked up the story of how the Apostle ran to jump over the fence, but caught his trouser leg or his trousers and thus failed to escape. The version sounds heroic, but alas, it is not reliable. It is not important what prompted Tsvyatkov to tell this particular version.
The truth about what exactly happened in the Kakrinsko inn is described, and it is in the words of Vasil Levski himself. The minutes of the interrogations of the Extraordinary Commission record the testimony of the Apostle, in which he tells the following:
Question: How were you captured?
Levski's answer: At about ten in the morning Turkish time (around 4-5 our time), when I went outside, I saw a man armed with a rifle in front of the door. I asked him who he was, he grabbed my arm. I had two revolvers, I took them out and wounded the man who captured me in the arm (this is Yussein Bosnak, the leader of the group of detainees sent to arrest him). Then I started (tried) to run, but the one who held me did not let me go. His comrades arrived, hit me on the head (and) I fell there. They captured me..."
The detainees were sent first to Tarnovo, and from there - to Sofia. The Extraordinary Investigation Commission seized the functions of a court and sentenced Vasil Levski to death. The Apostle was hanged on February 18, 1873 on the outskirts of (then) Sofia.
The inn in Kakrina fell into disrepair. It was later burned down, but in 1901, Prof. Dr. Paraskev Stoyanov made architectural surveys on the foundations that survived the fire. In the same year, the hunters placed a memorial plaque on the spot where the Apostle was captured.
A committee for the restoration of the memorial house of Vasil Levski in the village of Kakrina began in 1924 to raise funds for the restoration of the inn. In 1926, its construction began anew, and in 1931, the museum exhibition was officially opened with a ceremony.