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In 2000, archeologists unearthed the oldest known Thracian sanctuary (XIII-XI c. BC) in the Hemus, or Stara Planina, in Turlata, a hamlet close to Troyan.
In the year 15 AD the lands of present-day north Bulgaria lay within  the boundaries of the Roman province of Mizia. Even in the middle of the 1st c. AD, there was a strong Roman presence in the stations situated along the road through the Balkan. The active use of the Central Balkans during the two Dacian wars fought by the Emperor Marcus Ulpius Trayanus (98-117) firmly connected the road with his name. Passed down through the ages, his name survives today in the name ‘Troyan’.
The Roman stronghold Sostra
Sostra was a small Roman town, located by the important military road, connecting the Danube River with the province of Thrace. It was founded in the middle of the II century and existed until the end of the V century.
The archaeological team of the National Historical Museum – Sofia under the direction of doctor Ivan Hristov revealed during the last six years a big Roman stronghold, a civil settlement, a necropolis and an early-Christian church.
Nowadays, the efforts of the historians are turned to retain the antiquities and their integration in the tourist programs of the Troyan Municipality. The fortified walls are being restored, a new road and a parking near the heart of the Roman town-stronghold are being constructed. On St. Georges’s day /on May the 6th/ a new chapel was open next to the roots of one of the oldest churches in the Balkan – the early-Christian basilica “St. George”.
images
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In the 13th and 14th centuries the whole region, including the towns of Lovech and Troyan, played an important part in the life of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom. Well-built fortresses guarded the ancient Roman road here, the Via Trayana, regulating travel along this key route. Probably the name of the road was transferred to the settlement itself during the Middle Ages.
The name of Troyan first appeared in 1660 on a map, drawn by the French cartographer Nikola Sanson. Around the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries started the economic development of Troyan.
A number of crafts thrived here during the first half of the 19th century, including homespun tailoring, pottery making, and wood-turning.  Most important was the pottery industry, which still thrives today, centered around the town’s ceramic school. Troyan was granted the status of a town in 1868. Its local markets were the Troyan bazaar and the fair near the Troyan Monastery, but it had trading contacts as far afield as Istanbul, Bosna, Herzegovina, Serbia and Brashov.   The native practicality and thriftiness of the people of Troyan is reflected in the region’s domestic architecture. The typical house in Troyan is modest and unpretentious, but comfortable and cosy. It is a home which satisfies the needs of the people’s way of life and the developing crafts.
The liberation of Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke gave freedom to the characteristic activity and enterprise of the people in the region. In little more than half a century the people from Troyan managed to rebuild a prosperous community from the ashes left by the marauding bashi-bazouks in August 1877.
In 1911 the whole town was supplied with electricity. Troyan was the third town in Bulgaria to be introduced to electric energy, following Sofia and Plovdiv. Several crafts workshops developed into industrial  establishments of various kinds, metal work and machine building, woodwork, tannery and furriery, production of knitted woolen goods, and the carpet industry. Through its thriving craft (pottery, fur-cap making, and wooden goods) and developing industry, Troyan, together with the villages from the district, became the main supplier of these products to the markets all over Bulgaria. The excellent fruit grown in the region made Troyan a very famous town, still known as ‘the town of the blue plums and magical brandy’. 
The first stretch of the railway from Lovech to Troyan was started on 29th September 1929. That line, so vital to the region’s economy, was not completed until 1948.
Ever since the 1920s, Troyan’s cultural and economic life has been oriented towards Europe. During the 1930s products from its workshops were exhibited in Munich, Hamburg, Vienna and Milan. The permanent Crafts Exhibition, the predecessor of today’s Crafts Museum, was set up to promote the town and its crafts, and attract visitors.
Knowledge and scientific endeavour have always been greatly respected in Troyan. At the beginning of the 20th century many of the local elite sent their children to be educated in universities in Switzerland, France, Germany, England, Austria and the Czech Republic. Dr Naiden Sheitanov, then a student in Germany wrote that, as a characteristic citizen of Troyan “in his heart and mind, he is storing up treasures for a new age of culture whose dawn is just breaking”.
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The most ancient population, which inhabited the northern slopes of the Central Balkan and Pre-Balkan, lived in the caves of Mount Vasilyov. Archeological excavations, carried out in the Toplya cave near the village of Golyama Zhelyazna, which started at the end of the previous century, prove, that the region had already been inhabited at the end of the late Paleolithic Age (40 000-10 000 BC). During the Bronze Age (3 000-1 200 BC) the land beyond the upper reaches of the Osam river and its tributaries was inhabited by Thracians. According to Herodotus, 
the V c. BC Greek historian, these were members of the Krobizi tribe. The same tribes still lived in the Troyan region in the first century BC, which chronologically covers the time of the Iron Age (XII- I c. BC). The burial mounds are most numerous landmarks of that time. During archeological excavations, many relics from this period have been discovered, including black and red ceramics made either by hand or on a pottery wheel, iron weapons, bronze and silver vessels and utensils. What has been found is proof for the comparatively high social and economic level of the local Thracian population and strongly developed cult of ancestor-worship. 