Discover Veliko Tarnovo

A taste of Veliko Tarnovo

Veliko Tarnovo is Bulgaria's most theatrical city: a tangle of red-roofed houses cascading down three hills with the Yantra River curling around them like a moat. From the 12th century until the Ottoman conquest of 1393 it was the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire — a tsarist court that at its height controlled the Balkans from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. The story still lives at Tsarevets Fortress, the restored citadel on the central hill, with its Patriarchal Cathedral painted in striking modernist frescoes from the 1980s and a sound-and-light show that floods the ramparts in coloured beams on summer evenings. Below the fortress, the Samovodska Charshia craft quarter winds through 19th-century National Revival merchant houses, with workshops still producing copperware, icons, and textiles. The street of Gurko, terraced along the river, is one of the most photographed in Bulgaria. Nearby Arbanasi village holds tiny stone churches with extraordinary frescoes, and Etar Architectural Park outside Gabrovo is an excellent half-day trip.