Vagabond, Bulgaria's English Magazine

30/07/2025

📌 Villa Armira, Ivaylovgrad

Where the Rhodope slowly slides into the plain there is an amazing archaeological site. It's a reminder that long before the birth of modern Bulgaria and Greece, this region was rich and densely populated.

At the slopes of the Eastern Rhodope, a man, whose name and identity we will probably never know, built himself a spacious villa rustica, or a countryside mansion. The house offered an agreeable way of life and was headquarters for the exploitation of Rhodope rock quarries and the local lands. And the lands were rich.
The owner of the Villa Armira spared no expense on his villa. It spread over 3,600 sq m, had two stories, 22 mosaic-decorated rooms for the owners and their guests, and a sauna bathhouse. In the middle of the open yard there was a fresco-decorated pool with marble low reliefs of dolphins and tendrils, and hermae, or pillars adorned with a Hermes head.

Learn how Villa Armira was discovered and who were the family who owned it at: https://ancientbulgaria.bg/index.php/listings/villa-armira

📸 by Anthony Georgieff

29/07/2025

🌊Days at Sea: Head North!
🧭Bolata

Bolata is often described as one of the most beautiful beaches in Bulgaria. While beauty might be in the eyes of the beach goer, the natural settings of this sand crescent are really remarkable.

Rising red cliffs surround the tiny strip of sand just north from the stunning Kaliakra Cape and its medieval fortress. A narrow river gorge ending with a lush marshland is the only way to reach the beach. This rare combination of land, marshland and sea habitats is the home of many rare plant and animal species, hence the area's protected status.

This has not stopped a growing number of people from visiting Bolata in the summer. Some of them just enjoy the sun and the sand, others climb the steep cliffs, dive or try to navigate the treacherous waters around in boats.

Find out about other hidden gems of Bulgaria’s northern sea coast at: https://www.vagabond.bg/days-sea-head-north-4676

📸 by Anthony Georgieff

28/07/2025

🪄The Magic of Chiprovtsi Carpets

About 300 years ago carpets became the saviour of Chiprovtsi's economy. In the 15th to 17th centuries, the town was a bustling community of Saxon settlers, merchants from Dubrovnik and Bulgarian Roman Catholics, who worked the local copper, silver and gold ores and sold their wares and jewellery throughout the Balkans.

Wealthy Chiprovtsi flourished, had a sophisticated literary school and local boys grew up in the ranks of the Catholic Church. It all ended in 1688 when Chiprovtsi rebelled against the Sultan. The promised Austrian support never materialised and the rebellion was brutally crushed. Catholicism and mining were wiped out.

🧵Carpet weaving began at around that time, allegedly introduced by settlers from nearby Pirot, a Bulgarian town now in eastern Serbia, which still maintains its own carpet-making tradition. By the 19th century, Chiprovtsi carpets were sold throughout the Ottoman Empire and were the source of local wealth and fame. In 1878, after Bulgaria regained its independence, Chiprovtsi presented the Russian Imperial Governor of Bulgaria, Prince Alexandr Dondoukov, with the largest carpet ever made in town: it was seven metres long↔️ and six metres wide↕️.

How did the Chiprovtsi carpet-making tradition continue to floursih? And how is the craft preserved today? Dig into the details at: https://www.vagabond.bg/magic-chiprovtsi-carpets-4672

📸 by Anthony Georgieff

24/07/2025

👉Best Museums in Bulgaria👈
📍Pliska National Archeological Reserve

Where does Bulgaria begin? The answer is in an archaeological reserve that awes with its size, location - and rich history.

Pliska, the first capital of Bulgaria, was founded by Khan Asparuh soon after he and his people settled south of the Danube, in 681. Protected by a rampart and a moat, it had an outer and an inner city, and a citadel. The size of the site indicates the need of the early Bulgarians, who were nomads, for enough space for their horses and their tents. The khan and his family lived in a wooden palace.

After it was burned in 811 during a vicious siege by the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros, Pliska was entirely reconstructed with stone buildings, including fortifications, two royal palaces - one for official activities and one for living, a number of temples, granaries and more. An elaborate water supply system was fitted in the city, along with a number of baths.

Learn more about the Pliska archeological reserve at: https://bestmuseumsbulgaria.bg/en/listing/pliska-national-archaeological-reserve

23/07/2025

The Thracians built their megaliths from at least the 12th Century BC until the 6th-5th centuries BC, but they didn't stop with menhirs, cromlechs and dolmens.👷‍♂️ In the same period they also carved tombs and niches on vertiginous rocks.
The best places to see megaliths in Bulgaria are:
🔷the eastern section of the Rhodope,
🔷the Sakar and
🔷the Strandzha mountains.

The distribution of megaliths in these areas, however, is uneven: Rock niches and tombs are all over the eastern Rhodope, but are missing in the Strandzha, and there is only one of them in the Sakar. It is the other way round with dolmens: They abound in the Sakar and the Strandzha, but there are few in the eastern Rhodope.
Dive into the mysterious world of the Thracian megaliths at: https://ancientbulgaria.bg/thracians/megaliths

📸 by Anthony Georgieff

Thracian rock tomb at Gluhite Kamani shrine Dragon houses. Until not long ago, this was how Bulgarians called the squat, sturdy dolmens scattered in the low ridges of the Strandzha and Sakar mountains. The dolmens belong to the Thracians. This ancient people has its fair share of construction of meg...

22/07/2025

🌊Days at Sea: Head North!
🧭Shabla

Most people know Shabla, the last town before the border with Romania, for its distinctive red-and-white lighthouse, built in the 19th century by the Ottomans.
Shabla's beach is less popular but in good weather is a real pleasure with its fine sand and gentle slope towards the sea. It is by two lakes, one of which is salty and dries in summer, leaving a thick layer of supposedly healing mud. Whatever the real or supposed health benefits, covering yourself in a thick layer of black mud is fun, and makes some good photos.

Looking for more beach recommendations? Then explore our guide: https://www.vagabond.bg/days-sea-head-north-4676

📸 by Anthony Georgieff

21/07/2025

Authenticity, genuine patterns and natural materials are all the rage in interior design today. 💯

Current trends are all about handcrafted products that are beautiful to look at, do not pollute the environment and are not harmful to your health with microplastics and dust-generating synthetic materials. Finding such interior products is not easy. 🪡

But in a small town in Bulgaria you can find a surviving tradition that for centuries has produced amazing hand-woven carpets in stunning designs, using real wool and natural dyes. Tucked away on the slopes of the Stara Planina mountain range on the border with Serbia, Chiprovtsi is a quiet town still trying to recover from the shutdown of its lead, zinc and copper mines. However, a handful of women are doing their best to preserve the local carpet-making tradition, which was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014. 🧵

Discover the Bulgaria’s hidden treasure - the Chiprovtsi carpets at: https://www.vagabond.bg/magic-chiprovtsi-carpets-4672

📸 by Anthony Georgieff

18/07/2025

What comes to mind when we think of Communist-era public art statues and monuments would include:
✅Devoted freedom fighters,
✅Manly Red Army soldiers and workers,
✅Visionary or thoughtful Communist leaders.

Indeed, these archetypes of exemplary regime citizens were produced en masse between 1944 and 1989 and can still be found all over Bulgaria.

However, in art, ideology is not everything – not even in Socialist Bulgaria. After the late 1950s, when statues commissioned for prestigious and ordinary public spaces invariably featured realistic, heroic depictions of soldiers, guerrilla fighters, workers, Lenins, Stalins and Georgi Dimitrovs, there was a tangible shift in public art. Public spaces started to accommodate statues, murals and other artworks with an aesthetic rather than ideological function.

The subjects were usually idealised girls, couples in love and mothers with children. Surprisingly, some of the female figures look too erotic than would have befitted the puritan Communist society. It seems like a miracle that they were approved for public display by the omnipresent artistic councils that decided what to show in the towns and cities they were entrusted with.

Discover the story of how this set of public art made it across towns in Bulgaria: https://www.vagabond.bg/sexy-statues-communism-4674

📸 by Anthony Georgieff

17/07/2025

👉Best Museums in Bulgaria👈
📍Park of Space and Aviation, Omurtag

The jet fighters that rise by the Sofia-Varna road at Omurtag are a rather surprising sight. When you take the detour, you will find one of the few exhibitions dedicated to aviation and space technologies in Bulgaria. The site was located for a reason - Omurtag is the birthplace of pilot Aleksandar Aleksandrov, the second Bulgarian to fly in space. In 1988, he was onboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz TM-5.

The museum exhibition was created in 2008, to mark the 20th anniversary of the mission. It includes three fighters that Aleksandrov used to fly with (MiG-19, MiG-21 and SU-22), an M-11 surface-to-air missile system, and a radar. In Omurtag's History Museum (53 General Totleben St) you will find the spacesuit that Aleksandrov was supposed to wear in 1979. Back then, he was selected as replacement for Georgi Ivanov, who became Bulgaria's first man in space.

🔗Looking for other military museums around Bulgaria? Then head over to https://bestmuseumsbulgaria.bg/

16/07/2025

❔Did you know that the Thracian rock shrine and fortress Asara is known as City of Sun?

Asara, near the village of Angel Voyvoda has the hallmarks of a Thracian rock shrine. According to archaeologists, the Thracians created Asara shrine in the 1st millennium BC.

The ancient Thracians had a penchant for gold not only because of its value, but also because of its symbolic connection to the sun and the Great God. This probably explains the existence of the three tombs carved into prominent rocks. They probably belonged to royals and represented the union of the Great Goddess and the Great God, and the supposed immortality of anyone who believed in them.
This is why for some time now Asara has become known as City of Sun.☀️

Discover more of Bulgaria’s Thracian heritage in the online guide https://ancientbulgaria.bg/

📸 by Anthony Georgieff

15/07/2025

💜In recent years Bulgaria has become the world's leading producer and exporter of fine lavender. Today, the country produces about 200 tonnes of lavender oil a year. 💜

Lavender production is not new to Bulgaria. It has been grown all over the country, including the low mountain slopes of the southern Stara Planina, since at least the 19th century. In the 20th century, production was industrialised, first by entrepreneurs mainly in the Valley of Roses, and then by Communist Bulgaria. A specialised scientific institute dedicated to the development of local essential oil plants of industrial importance – oil-bearing rose, lavender and mint – even developed special machinery for harvesting and insect treatment. New varieties of lavender were selected to improve resistance to pests, disease and cold.

This is the story of lavender production in Bulgaria: https://www.vagabond.bg/purple-craze-4670
📸 by Anthony Georgieff

Bulgaria is world's leading producer of lavender, but for most people its appeal is purely aestheti

14/07/2025

In this and the next issue of Vagabond, we will present the best sunbathing spots along the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. 🌊

We start in the north 🧭

The north section of Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast is a lesser known and less crowded area stretching from the Romanian border to Cape Emine, where the Stara Planina mountain range plunges into the sea. Due to the region's geography and climate, summers here are shorter and the waters are cooler, but do not let this put you off – Bulgaria's northern beaches more than make up for this with their beautiful setting.

Dive into the suggested list of best beaches to explore: https://www.vagabond.bg/days-sea-head-north-4676

📸 by Anthony Georgieff