Montana is a city in northwestern Bulgaria, located 50 kilometres (31 miles) south of Danube river, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Vratsa and 30 kilometres (19 miles) east of the Serbian border. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Montana Province. When the town was first settled by Slavs it was known as Kutlovitsa; later in Ottoman Turkish as Kutlofca. The town was renamed Ferdinand in 1890, receiving the benevolence of Bulgarian Knyaz Ferdinand and a city status. On 1 March 1945, by a decree of the government, the communist authorities changed the towns name to Mihaylovgradafter the red party activist Hristo Mihaylov (died 1944), a leader of the 1923 September Uprising in the region. In 1993, after a presidential decree, the town received the name Montana, inspired by the name of the nearby Roman settlement. Montana is situated on the river Ogosta, north of Stara Planina, surrounded on the south and east by uplands. The climate is temperate continental, with a cold winter and hot summer. The average temperature is 1 °C (34 °F) in January and 25 °C (77 °F) in July.