Culture

The Bulgarian lands have rich and most diverse cultural heritage and it’s called also a country of roses and monasteries. Inhabited since prehistoric times, they keep lasting traces from different ages with rich traditions. Their location on a crossroads explains the intertwining, mixing, the mutual influences of the culture and religions of tribes and peoples, having lived and crisscrossed the region. Invaluable is the cultural and historical heritage of ancient Thracians, Greeks, Romans and generations of Bulgarians leaving their achievements and useful information about their lifestyle, traditions and their spiritual enlight,  enment.

The gold objects found in the Varna Chalcolithic necropolis have been described as the oldest processed gold in the world. The most ancient copper mines in Europe have been found in the vicinities of Stara Zagora.

Among the most precious relics in the Bulgarian lands has been the cultural heritage of the Thracians, who had produced incredible artistic and architectural masterpieces. The Thracian art, passing through a long and complicated path of development from the beginning of the late Bronze Age to the end of Antiquity has left remarkable treasures, temples, sanctuaries and cities.

Listed among the favourite sites of cultural tourism in Bulgaria are the Kazanluk tomb and the Sveshtari tomb, included in the list of the UNESCO-protected world cultural heritage.

The region of the Kazanluk valley (known as the Valley of Roses) became particularly popular in the 1990s, as new tombs were unearthed there, presenting the evolution of the Thracian culture in the 5^th-4^th century BC. Bulgaria and the world started to speak about the Valley of the Thracian kings.

During the last few years the findings of the Bulgarian archaeologists have been bordering on sensations. Enormous interest has been shown in the Starosel Thracian cult centre (near Hissarya, Plovdiv region), in Perperikon (by the side of Kurdzhali, in the eastern parts of the Rhodope Mountains), where a rock-built sacred city of the Thracians has been found.

Traces of structures from Roman times can be identified to this day: fortress walls and forums, temples, thermae, amphitheatres, stadiums and buildings of various assignments in the ancient cities. Among the best known are the ancient theatre in Plovdiv, the Roman thermae in Varna, the museum display in the open of Sexaginta Prista in the central part of Rouse, the impressive remains of ancient thermae in Kyustendil and many more.

Very interesting and highly valuable are the late Antiquity floor mosaics from Augusta Trajana (present-day Stara Zagora), the Roman and early Byzantine mosaics of what had once been Martianopolis (an archaeological reserve), the mosaics in the Mosaics Museum, the only one of its kind, in Devnya.

The stunning remains of Pliska and Veliki Preslav (the first and the second capital of Danubian Bulgaria) are living evidence of the traditional building skills, brought by the old Bulgarians. Their grand architecture is kind of a symbol of the political, economic and cultural upsurge of the medieval Bulgarian state. The reign of Simeon the Great, marked by an exceptional political upsurge and the flowering of culture and letters, has been referred to as a Golden Age of Bulgarian Culture.

Veliko Turnovo has been the living symbol of Bulgarian statehood over the ages. It is one of the most visited towns in Bulgaria. Part of the city territory has been declared a museum reserve. The brilliant capital of the Bulgarian Kingdom during the 12^th-14^th centuries, Turnovo was among the largest cities in terms of area and population in the Southeast Europe of that time.

Objects of cultural tourism are both a number of settlements and town districts, having preserved the atmosphere of the National Revival period like Koprivshtitsa, the Old Plovdiv, Veliko Turnovo, Arbanassi, Zheravna, Bozhentsi, Tryavna, Bansko, Melnik and some others (some of them have the status of cultural and historical reservations), as well as remarkable monasteries and churches, among which are the Rila, Bachkovo, Troyan, Rozhen, Preobrazhenski monasteries, the Church of the Holy Virgin in Pazardzhik, the Church of the Holy Trinity in Bansko and some others.

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