Tsarevets

For two centuries the rocky hill of Tsarevets was the beating heart of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Between 1185 and 1393 it served as the chief stronghold of the capital Tarnovo, sheltering both the royal palace and the seat of the Bulgarian patriarch. People had lived here since the second millennium BC, and an early Byzantine town stood on the summit before the Bulgarian fortress rose on top of it in the 12th century.

The defences were formidable: walls up to 3.6 metres thick girdled the whole hill, and the main western gate was reached across a drawbridge on a narrow rock neck, followed by two further gates deeper inside. At the centre lay a walled palace compound of almost 4,900 square metres with a throne hall, a court church and royal apartments. Higher still stood the patriarchal complex, crowned today by the Church of the Ascension, rebuilt in 1981 and painted in 1985 with strikingly modernist frescoes that mix biblical scenes with triumphs and tragedies of medieval Bulgaria; the church was never reconsecrated. Archaeologists have counted some 400 houses, more than 22 churches and four monasteries on the slopes. The end came in 1393, when an Ottoman army besieged the hill for three months and took and burnt it on 17 July, an event that marks the fall of the medieval Bulgarian state.

What visitors walk through today is the result of a long restoration carried out between 1930 and 1981. Look for Baldwin's Tower, a 1930 reconstruction on the spot where, by tradition, the captured Latin Emperor Baldwin I of Constantinople died as a prisoner of Tsar Kaloyan, and for Execution Rock above the river, from which traitors were thrown. On certain evenings the Sound and Light show, staged since 1985, bathes the walls in coloured light, lasers and church bells to retell the fall of Tarnovo.

Getting there

Tsarevets rises within Veliko Tarnovo, about 2 km from the town centre, and is easily reached on foot. Veliko Tarnovo has a railway station on the north–south line between Ruse and Stara Zagora; many trains from Sofia or Varna require a change at nearby Gorna Oryahovitsa, about 11 km away by road, from where buses and taxis run into town. The local Gorna Oryahovitsa airfield does not handle regular passenger flights. The nearest airport by straight line is Plovdiv (PDV), about 130 km away, but most travellers fly into Sofia or Varna and continue by train or coach.