Vagabond, Bulgaria's English Magazine

17/09/2025

👉 Best museums in Bulgaria 👈

🗓️ Today, Sofia celebrates - its official holiday is the day of the St Sophia and her daughters, Vyara, Nadezhda and Lyubov, or Faith, Hope and Love.

🤔 But do you know that the 🇧🇬 Bulgarian capital was named after a… church?
‼️Now in the centre of Sofia, in late Antiquity the basilica of St Sophia (the name means Holy Wisdom) was outside the then city walls. Initially it was a humble 🪦 cemetery church or, more accurately, a sequence of 3️⃣ churches built one after – and on top of – the other in the span of two centuries. A fourth church ⛪, the one you see today, was built in the late 5th and the early 6th centuries.
The church remained in use throughout the Middle Ages. In the 16th Century it was turned into a mosque and was abandoned in the 19th Century after a series of earthquakes left it badly damaged . At the end of the century it was used as a storage room and as a watchtower for the local fire brigade. It was only after 1911 that the basilica was surveyed and restored. St Sophia became a functioning church in 1998.
But it is also a spectacular museum - especially its subterranean level where you can explore scores of Early Christian tombs.
Learn more, click on the link in the first comment
📷 Anthony Georgieff

16/09/2025

😳 When the young Patrick Leigh Fermor – a man considered one of the 20th century great 🚂 travel writers – visited this town in 1934, he stumbled upon an oddity. The city was cosmopolitan and rather rundown, part Danubian and part post-Ottoman – a place where one could drink a huge ☕ Viennese coffee in a brightly lit coffee shop that served both Mitteleuropean 🥮 cakes and 🥨 pretzels, and Middle Eastern kataifi and baklava.

🤔Today the town is again borderland – straddling not different cultures but historical periods. It mixes magnificent fin-de-siècle architecture of the time between the 1878 Liberation and the Second World War, when it was known as Little Vienna; Brutalist buildings and prefab concrete housing estates from the Communist period; and characterless new construction typical for the period of the transition to democracy and the 2000s. All this in various states of disrepair, yet amazingly vivacious and vibrant.
⁉️ Where in Bulgaria are you?
Send us an email with your answer – and if you got it right and live in Bulgaria, you can win a copy of our book, Wall-to-Wall. Poetry Europe

https://vagabond.bg/



📷 Anthony Georgieff

Link to the full article in the first comment

12/09/2025

🏠 Whitewashed houses of stone and clay brick, with bay windows and heavy roofs of crooked tiles or even stone slabs: this is what 🇧🇬 Bulgarian traditional villages and towns look like.

‼️Bardarski Geran is a striking exception. It looks like an Austro-Hungarian village, from the days when the Habsburg Empire was a major European power and not a lesson in the history books. The houses here have steep roofs, decorative gables and walls painted in bright colours – pink, ochre and orange. In the square, ⛪ St Joseph's Church has a neo-Gothic appearance, as does the Church of the Virgin Mary down the street.

Bardarski Geran is the only 🇩🇪 German village in Bulgaria. The Swabians arrived here in 1893, lured by the promise of newly independent Bulgaria's vast uncultivated lands and labour shortage, hoping to buy cheap 🐄 farms. This was not their first attempt at emigration. Their ancestors had left Germany in the 17th century and settled along the Danube in the Banat, an area of present-day 🇭🇺 Hungary,🇷🇴 Romania and 🇷🇸 Serbia, to escape the Thirty Years' War. Soon Bardarski Geran had almost 💯 German families, who found Bulgaria a land of opportunity.
‼️But Bardarski Geran was actually founded by other immigrants. The village was founded by Bulgarian Catholics from the Banat who returned to their former homeland under a law that gave free land to people of Bulgarian descent.
https://vagabond.bg/



📷 Anthony Georgieff

Link to the full article in the first comment

09/09/2025

👉Best Museums in Bulgaria
☝️In contrast to the other countries in the former East bloc 🇧🇬 Bulgaria has no museum dedicated to its history as a Communist country. However, there is a permanent exhibition of Socialist-era art in Sofia. The 🖼️ Museum of Socialist Art is a branch of the National Art Gallery. On an area of 7,500 square metres it collects monumental and smaller sculptures, paintings and so on, created in 1944-1989 and reflecting the spirit of the times. Their authors are among the most famous sculptors and painters of the period.
The openair exhibit of large sculptures presents some of the most memorable artworks, from monuments to prominent historical figures to conceptual ouvres of victorious workers and rebels. Here is also the original five-pointed star, which stood on the Party House in Sofia in 1954-1984, when it was replaced with a newer, bigger star.
Learn more, click on the link in the first comment
📷 Anthony Georgieff

05/09/2025

🚗 Bulgaria’s best drives! Anyone who has done any driving on 🇧🇬 Bulgaria's roads will be familiar with the pitfalls (pun unintended): bad or non-existent asphalt, unpredictable and uncared-for potholes, 🛑 confusing signage, 🚙 🚛 maniacal drivers and 👮 traffic cops that contribute to the problems rather than try to solve them.

Yet anyone who is even remotely interested in looking at the world from the window of a car will instantly know that driving through Bulgaria's lesser and off-the-beaten track roads is absolutely the best way to take in the natural and cultural beauties of this country and to experience a first-hand interaction with its people. In the following weeks we will offer you our Best-Of selection of Bulgaria's scenic drives that will keep you, well, driving for weeks if not months.

📍We start with Troyan-Karnare Pass (Road 35)

This road starts in Troyan, in northern Bulgaria, crosses the Balkan Mountains, or Stara Planina mountain range, and ends at the village of Karnare, in southern Bulgaria. We recommend driving it north to south as in this way your lane will be next to the safety railing and will offer some unparalleled vistas at both the northern and the southern slopes of the mountain.

↩️ ↪️ ⤴️ ⤵️ The road is winding and you may well get stuck behind a lorry pumping out obnoxious exhaust fumes. Instead of overtaking it, pull over and let it get ahead while you enjoy the serenity of ⛰️ Stara Planina.

As you approach the highest point of the road, a peak called Beklemeto, look right and you will see a small side road that may sometimes be marked with a sign. Go up, and in less than a mile it will take you right up to the top. There is a huge Communist-era monument right on top meant to commemorate a 19th century battle between the Russians and the Ottomans that in fact never happened. You can park there and walk around. In good weather the 3️⃣6️⃣0️⃣-degree panorama at your feet will keep you standing for ⏳ hours. You may even go there at night. This is one of the best star-gazing locations in all of Bulgaria.
https://vagabond.bg/



📷 Anthony Georgieff

Link to the full article in the first comment

03/09/2025

The opulently painted tomb near the village of Aleksandrovo is one of the greatest discoveries in recent Bulgarian archaeology, and its discovery happened in a spectacular way.🌟

On 17 December 2000, the last day of excavations at two small Thracian burial mounds in the area, the head of the team, Dr Georgi Kitov (1943-2008), made a short trip to the nearby town. On his way he spotted something strange. 🔎

The mound of Roshavata Chuka, or Bushy Rock Peak, stood out among the low hills – big and impressive, 15 m high, 70 m wide. Partly overgrown with shrubs and trees, the mound had been unexplored. On this day, however, Kitov clearly saw gaping holes on the mound's surface. They hadn't been there before. Someone had been digging at Roshavata Chuka, and that someone was clearly not an archaeologist.

When the team of archaeologists arrived at the mound to inspect it, they discovered a freshly dug shaft leading to a stone slab covering the corridor of a tomb which was obviously under the mound.

What happened next? And what did the archeologist discover? ⛏️ 🧹Read on at: https://ancientbulgaria.bg/listings/alexandrovo-tomb

📸 by Anthony Georgieff

02/09/2025

❗With the real estate market 🏠 in Bulgaria upsurging 📈 – prices have increased by 1️⃣5️⃣% in the first trimester of 2025 – everyone is asking one big question: what is going to happen next? Most analysts predict that the upsurge is bound to continue at least until the end of the year – a sign for both investors and first-time buyers that they have to act fast.
❗Tanya Tsvetkova, however, is focused on another aspect of the property market in Bulgaria. The founder of Svetlina Real Estate, a boutique real estate agency with significant impact, has always been dedicated to building long-term relationships with her clients.

❗For her, the art of the deal is not about squeezing maximum profits for minimum time, but about developing personal relationships with people, in understanding their true needs and true desires, and finding properties that fit best their vision. As anyone who has been involved in a property transaction knows, such qualities and qualifications are what make good real estate agents stand out.

Link to the full interview in the first comment
📷 Dragomir Ushev

https://vagabond.bg/

01/09/2025

29/08/2025

Images of jazz 🎷: Yambol hosts first international show of jazz photography

Owing to the enthusiasm of Konstantin Zaykov, a local jazz aficionado and himself a photographer, the first international jazz photography competition took place in Yabol. It included the works of 100 photographers from 50 different countries.

According to Zaykov people want to see images of their favourite musicians long after the lights have gone out. An e-catalogue that Zaykov is preparing at the moment will give them an opportunity to do jazz that.

Explore more of the stunning photography from the international show at: https://vagabond.bg/images-jazz-4711

28/08/2025

👉Best Museums in Bulgaria👈
📍Ancient Ceramics Center Pavlikeni

One of Bulgaria's most memorable museum experiences awaits you in the hills near Pavlikeni. There, in a charming grove amid the farming land you will find the well preserved remains of an ancient Roman rural villa that was the centre of mass scale pottery production.

Between the 1st and 3rd century AD, potters used to make and fire in large kilns everything - from sewage pipes to fine pottery to gods' statuettes to children's toys. The villa's remains were discovered by treasure hunters in the 1970s, after the ensuing excavations a museum was created.

It not only told the story of the local pottery production. It also had a working kiln and visitors would be able to fire something in it. Today this part of the exhibition does not work, but the visit is still worth it.

🗺️Find out more about the Ancient Ceramics Center and how to get there at: https://bestmuseumsbulgaria.bg/en/listing/ancient-roman-pottery-production-facility

27/08/2025

📌Thracian sights: Mishkova Niva

Situated at the feet of the 710-metre Golyamo Gradishte peak, the tomb at Mishkova Niva was part of a bigger complex consisting of a necropolis, a residential building and a mine, which were the property of the household of the Roman emperors in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.

The tomb was discovered in the early 20th Century by Karel and Hermann Škorpil, the Czech brothers who laid the foundations of Bulgarian archaeology. The find made an instant impression with its most distinct feature: a pediment over the entrance decorated with a low relief of a shield and a spear, and two human palms.⭐ The pediment is no longer in situ, as it was moved to the History Museum at Malko Tarnovo and is now the star exhibit of its lapidarium.

The rest of the tomb, whose mound was excavated by archaeologists in the early 1980s, still stands in the midst of a clearing in the lush oak forest. Poor conservation, however, has taken its toll: Few of the blocks of the krepis, or the 23-metre-wide, 1.8-metre-high wall which once supported the mound, can now be seen on their designated places.

👀 See and learn more about Mishkova Niva at: https://ancientbulgaria.bg/listings/mishkova-niva-tomb

📸 by Anthony Georgieff

26/08/2025

🖌️Painted in 1925 by Ivan Milev (1897-1927), Ahinora is painting inspired by a text written in 1917 by Nikolay Raynov, an outstanding Bulgarian symbolist.

Raynov imagined Ahinora as a Slavic priestess who lived at a time when a new people were about to arrive and change history forever, the proto-Bulgarians. She caught the eye of Khan Asparuh, the Bulgar leader, and they married. However, when Asparuh was about to cross the Danube with his army to fight against the Byzantines and secure some new lands for his people, Bulgarian priests told him that he needed to sacrifice his most precious possession to ensure success. This, of course, was Ahinora.💔

It is unclear exactly what impressed Milev so much in Raynov's story. It could be Ahinora's tragic end on the stake, or lines such as: "So, here I am: I bring with me the scent of thousands of kisses, and among them, the allure of a sublime kiss – a deadly one: the kiss of fire!" It could be the anticipation of his own early death from the Spanish flu, or a real-life woman – possibly his wife, an opera singer whom he married in 1925.

📜Find out the full story behind Ahinora and its author Ivan Milev at: https://vagabond.bg/looking-ahinoras-eyes-4713

📸 by Anthony Georgieff