Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari — mausoleum
Interact-Bulgaria · CC BY-SA 4.0

Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari

  • 2 min read
  • 43.745° N 26.766° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • The decoration was never finished: some caryatids' hands are only roughly hewn and the lunette painting is partly just outlined in black, suggesting the ruler died suddenly.
  • The lunette shows the ruler on horseback with two attendants, receiving a golden wreath from a goddess followed by four women bearing gifts, a scene of his deification.
  • Each of the ten caryatids is about 1.2 metres tall, wearing a finely pleated sleeveless gown and a basket-shaped headdress known as a kalathos.
  • Traces of dark brown paint still survive on the caryatids' hair, faces and garments, which were originally coloured.
  • The bones of five horses were found in the tomb, killed so that they could accompany their master into the afterlife.
  • The burial chamber held two stone beds and a sculpted facade of a miniature temple standing beside one of them.
  • A Celtic brooch of La Tène type was found in the burial, although every other part of the rite, including a dog laid on a stone, follows Getic custom.
  • Its entrance is framed by columns with Ionic capitals beneath a relief frieze of ox heads, rosettes and garlands.
  • The tomb was found in late August 1982 under the Ginina mound, in excavations led by the archaeologist Maria Chichikova.
  • Twenty-six burial mounds of different sizes line a two-kilometre stretch around the tomb, now protected as the Sboryanovo archaeological reserve.

Why it is worth it

In 1982 archaeologists opening a mound in the Sboryanovo necropolis of north-eastern Bulgaria found a stone tomb whose central chamber is unlike anything else known from the Thracian world. Ten female figures, carved in high relief, stand around its walls with raised arms, their lower bodies dissolving into stylised plant forms, and the lunette of the vault above them is also decorated. These half-human, half-vegetal caryatids have no parallel anywhere in the Thracian lands, which is why this small, buried building sits on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The tomb was built in the first quarter of the 3rd century BC by the Getae, a Thracian people who then controlled both banks of the lower Danube. Scholars most often link it to Dromichaetes, king of the Getae around 300 BC, and to his wife, said to be a daughter of Lysimachus, one of Alexander the Great's successors; this attribution is probable rather than proven. The tomb is built as a sequence of chambers under an earth mound and follows the structural rules of Thracian cult architecture, but its polychrome decoration shows how closely Getic rulers were engaging with the Hellenistic world.

The surrounding landscape is part of the story. Around the mound lie dozens of other Getic burial tumuli, and on a plateau almost encircled by the ravines of the Krapinets River are the remains of a fortified city with walls up to four metres thick, occupied from about 335 to 250 BC; some researchers identify it with Helis, the Getic capital mentioned by ancient writers. Excavations near the village have continued to yield finds, including a hoard of gold ornaments recovered in 2012.

Conservation comes first here. Visitors enter the tomb, but the chamber with the caryatids is seen through glass rather than entered, which keeps the fragile painted surfaces stable.

Getting there

The tomb lies about 2.5 km south-west of the village of Sveshtari and roughly 8 km from the town of Isperih, in Razgrad Province; Razgrad itself is about 42 km away by road. The simplest way to reach the mound is by car or taxi from Isperih. The nearest Bulgarian airport is Varna (VAR), about 103 km away in a straight line; Bucharest Băneasa (BBU) across the Danube in Romania is at a similar distance.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Bulgaria 16The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Bulgaria 5The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Bulgaria 6The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Mausoleums 11The Most Beautiful Mausoleums 36The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Sacred Places 179The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Thracian Tomb of Svestari is 2.5 kilometers (1.6 mi) southwest of the village of Sveshtari, Razgrad Province, which is 42 kilometers (26 mi) northeast of Razgrad, in northeast Bulgaria. The tomb is probably the grave of Dromichaetes who was a king of the Getae on both sides of the lower Danube around 300 BC, and his wife, the daughter of King Lysimachus who was a general and diadochus of Alexander the Great. The tomb is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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