ARBANASSI

Austere houses that resemble minor fortresses on the outside. with high, solid walls and heavy gates, iron, rids and secret hiding-places, but which are spacious and comfortable, richly decorated and furnished on the inside. The oldest of Arbanassi’s five churches is The Birth of Christ ( 1637 - 1649). dug into the ground without a belfry and with hidden cupola, but hiding a genuine art gallery with over 3.500 stunningly realistic figures and Biblical scenes, painted by unknown artists throughout the ages.

BANSKO

The newest Bulgarian winer resort, recently discovered by the foreign tourists, Bansko provides an interesting combination between the virgin nature of Pirin Mountain and the atmosphere of the ancient Bulgarian town.

The town of Bansko is situated in Southwestern Bulgaria, at the foothills of one of the most beautiful Bulgarian mountains - Pirin, which is a national preserve, included in the WORLD NATURAL HERITAGE list. Ski-resort of national significance, much visited also in summer as a starting point for excursions in the mountain.
Surrounded by the Pirin, Rila and Rhodopi mountains, Bansko is a climatic mountain resort with a short hot summer and long mild winter. The average temperature during January, the coldest month, is - 1.9ÀC. Snow falls are abundant, providing a constant winter snow cover up to 2 m thick. The skiing season along the Pirin slopes starts in the middle of December and ends in mid-April.

BOZHENTSI
BOZHENTSI ARCHITECTURAL AND HISTORIC RESERVE

An idyllic village nestling in the folds of the Balkan Range, 16 km from the town of Gabrovo, which time seems to have lulled to sleep centuries ago. The shutters of the workshops have been closed, the blacksmiths have stopped hammering, the hearths have gone out. The well in the square. the wax workshop and the St. Elija Church are almost 200 years old. Until the end of the 19-th century Bojenci has been an economic, administrative, educational and spiritual center for the surrounding villages. Today, there are 100 houses left, built 100 - 250 years ago.

ETURA

Eight km from the center of Gabrovo, master craftsmen fashion beautiful gold, silver, copper, leather and wooden articles right before your eyes from early morning until late at the night. The waft of freshly baked bread drifts across from an old bakery and a tiny coffee shop serves streaming sweet Turkish coffee cooked in a copper pot. Pastry cooks offer delicious home-made cookies and cakes. And around this - lovely old houses, flowers on the window sills, small shops with wooden shutters and gas lanterns on the street corners.

KOPRIVSHTITSA

One of the most charming small Bulgarian towns, still preserving the atmosphere of the National Re- vival period, is huddled in the mountain folds 111 km east of Sofia. The town is a unique combina- tion of a legendary history and fascinating present. No other Bulga- rian museum town boasts such a large number of houses and mo- numents - 383 in all, most of which have been restored to their original appearance. A unique col- lection of ethnographical treasu- res, old weapons, National Revival works of art, fine fretwork, house- hold weaves and embroidery, na- tional costumes and typical Bul- garian jewelry has also been pre- served. It was here that the first bullet of the April Uprising against the Ottoman oppressors was fired in 1876.

White stone walls, overgrown with ivy and wild geranium, fence in gardens full of flowers. Vaulted stone bridges run across the bubbly Topolnitsa river. Heavy, iron-studded gates hide blue, yellow and red houses with verandas, bay windows and eaves, and the spacious rooms are lit up by brightly coloured rugs and cushions, carved ceilings and cupboards, copper vessels and ceramics.
Specialists say that every house in Koprivshtitsa is a work of art. The Oslekov, Kableshkov and Lyutov houses are fine examples of this.

The houses dated to the second half of the 19th century have exqusite painted facades and sunny ve- randahs, with carved ceilings and stylish European furnishings.

KOTEL

Kotel is a town which is a legend and a history! It is situated amidst the picturesque natural scenery of the Eastern Balkan Range and is not only a place with majestic nature, fresh air and pure mountain water, an important cultural and historical centre.

Kotel has beautiful architectural models from the Late Revival and one of the most important centers of the weaving art.

The name of the town is mentioned for the first time in a Turkish document in1486. In the second half of the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth Centuties more than 450 000 heads of sheep were said to have been raised by the Kotel shepherds up there, far to the north east, in the rolling planes of Dobroudzha where from endless oxteam caravans of shorn wool kept coming back to Kotel to be turned into homespun abas and hoddens. Long term contracts for cloth deliveries to the Ottoman Army had provided the population with considerable privileges and had given them self - confidence and a spirit of freedom loving and independence. The Kotel people are known to be industrious, enterprising and studious. They used to keep up on donations of their own the 5 secular schools, to build clapboard houses with woodcut doors, carved ceiling soffits. Women had added homespun broadloom carpets, fluffy rugs and cushions to the beauty and warmth of their homes. Kotel is turned into one of the richest, most beautiful, patriotic settlements - a national center of the Bulgarian Revival

MELNIK

Melnik (pop. 800) is the smallest Bulgarian town, picturesquely situated amidst a fantastic scenery - strangely shaped pyramids of sand and limestone. During the 17th - 18th c. it become a flourishing tobacco and wineproducing center, whose fame spread to many European countries. The beautiful fortress-like houses with broad wine-cellars cut in the limestone rocks date from this period.
Steep, strangely shaped sandstone rocks, lovely white houses perched on their slopes and a single street which leads to the finest example of the former splendour of this small southern town.
The Kordopoulos House - with Venetian stained glass windows, spacious rooms and salons, ornamental murals, weaves and fretwork, a wrought iron gate and large wine-cellar from which caravans with the famous Melnik wine once left for Salonika, Athens, Vienna, Rome, and even Marseille and Spain.

NESSEBUR

It is located on a small peninsula in the Black Sea wich is linked with the land only by a long and narrow isthmus. It has existed for more than 9,000 years. It emerged as a fortified Thracian settlement; afterwards it was a Greek polis, then a Roman colony, a Byzantine.

Nessebar is best known for the old town (about 9000 years) on the peninsula. No one can say for sure whether the isthmus is natural or man-made. The largest number and best known buildings date from 11th to 14th centuries almost all of them churchies in the so called "picturesque" style: walls intersected by pilasters and lunettes, with stone, brick and ceramic ornaments and arches along the cornice. Christ Pantokrator church (10th - 11th c.)

Some of the churches have stunningly beautiful facades and interiors and are among the best preserved ones in the Balkan Peninsula. The oldest one is the Sveti Ioan Krastitel (St.John the Baptist, 10th -11th century.

Today the old part of the town has regained its original romantic atmosphere: narrow cobblestone lanes, tiny squares, two-storeyed period houses with stone-built ground levels and wooden upper floors jutting above the streets and external staircases, gift shops, pubs, tavern and lovely flower gardens.

OLD PLOVDIV

During the 19th century Bulgarian master builders erected the National Revival city of Plovdiv (the Old Town) with steep cobbled lanes, lovely houses with large bay windows and slender columns, latticed eaves and heavy oak gates, quiet green yards and rippling marble fountains. Every house here has its own style and atmosphere.

More ancient than Bulgaria itself, this singular city preserves vivid memories of its turbulent and dramatic fate. In 342 B.C. Philip 11 of Macedon conquered the Thracian town of Evmolpia leaving, it his name - Philippopolis. At the start of our millennium the Romans conquered Thrace and called the city Trimontium.

During the 19th century Bulgarian master builders erected the National Revival city of Plovdiv (the Old Town) with steep cobbled lanes, lovely houses with large bay windows and slender columns, latticed eaves and heavy oak gates, quiet green yards and rippling marble fountains. Every house here has its own style and atmosphere. Situated on three hills in the Thracian Plain, encircled by the slow running waters of the Maritza river, Bulgaria's second largest city today, Plovdiv has a 24 centuries long history and is one of the ancient crossroads between East and West. Landmarks remaining from Roman times include the Philip- popolis Amphitheatre and the restored 2nd century Antique Theatre. The marble-tiled Forum, the Ethnogrphic museum, the art galleries, churches and the street of folk arts and crafts are major landmarks of Old Plovdid. The Old Plovdiv on Trimontzium hill is famous fot its National Revival architecture (from 18th-19th c.). Many of the houses are now museums: the Ethnographic Museum, the Museum of the National Revival and the National Liberation struggles, the Alphonse de Lamartine museum house.

SHIROKA LUKA

SHIROKA LUKA - a village in the valley of Shirokolushka River, 20 km north-west of Smolyan; architectural and ethnographical reserve. Population of 910.

Settled at the time of mass conversion to Mohammedanism of the Rhodope population during the years of Ottoman yoke.

Revival town planning construction has been preserved. 90 sites have been proclaimed monuments of culture. Many houses have been preserved also 6 bridges and the complex of the old school St. Panteleimon (1888) and the Church of the Holy Virgin (1834).

The oldest houses date back to the beginning of the 19th C. (1802, 1829). The houses built towards the middle of the 19th C. are bigger, varied in design by the introduction of overhanging bays and forthcoming protrusions. These resemble fortresses - the ground floors of economic importance are built of stone, levelled by means of wooden girdles (santrachi); topmost one will see the residential quarters - glazed, with protruding bays, white-washed and framed in wood. The roofs are stone-tiled, and the chimneys - of original multiform design.

Here in Shiroka Luka there is a musical school teaching national instruments.
The village is a starting point to Golyam Perelik Peak.

SOZOPOL

Apolonia - this is how it was called in 610 B.C. by its founders - Greek settlers from Miletus, who erected a majestic bronze statue of the God of Health, Sun and Beauty Apollo above the town.

Numerous red and black figural vases, coloured glass vessels, jewellry, amphoras and anchors, now exhibited in the town’s Museum of Ancient Art, date from the heyday of this flourishing town and state. The Bulgarian National Revival period left its own vivid marks on the appearance of this unusual town, some 30 km south of Bourgas, fine architectural ensembles of solid wooden houses.

Thr unaproachable stone houses resenble fortress with secret stores and only through secret entrances one can get into them..

TRYAVNA

Tryavna is a town preferred by tourists for its clean mountain air and unique Renaissance architecture.

The guests of the town will enjoy their excursions to various villages and huts, scattered in the vicinity.
Tryavna is situated 400 meters above the sea level. A good road and railroad network connects the town with all farther spots of the country.

Feeling the beauty, with faith towards centuries-old traditions and love towards the Bulgarian Heritage, the Tryavna masters gain popularity in the field of building, woodcarving and icon painting, which they handle to perfection and transform into art. Thus comes into being, develops and flourishes the oldest Renaissance Art school in the Bulgarian land - the Tryavna school.

In Tryavna and the surrounding vicinity there are many places where one can find the unique beauty of the Renaissance period. Such are the architectural and historical ensembles The Old Square, P. R. Slaveikov street, Kachaunska neighbourhood and the place Tepavitsite, Skortsite village, the temples St. Archangel Michael and St. George, the unique museums - Daskalov's house, Raykov's house, Angel Kunchev's and P. R. Slaveikov's houses, Staroto Shkolo (the old school) and the Museum of Icon Painting and Wood-carving, art exhibitions of Dimitur and Nikola Kazakovi, Nikolai Maistorov and Ivan Kolev, the Gubenskies' collection of pictures.

ZHERAVNA

The village of Zheravna resembles a wreath spread over the southern slopes of two small hills in the Eastern Balkan Range. Brooks run softly down its steep lanes. The village houses with their broad eaves peak out behind high stone walls, The majority are well preserved. All are modeled on the"wooden type" house prevalent in the entire region of the Eastern Balkan Range.

A characteristic feature is that all Zheravna houses, without exception, face south - with extensive facades in the yard's northern part, far from the street when it passes south of them, and houses turned the otherway, but close to the street if it runs to the north. The older houses are single storeyed and made entirely out of wood. Later houses, with two stories, have their ground floor built of stone. The facades have clearly horizontal lines, emphasized by the forward brought second floor and the strongly jutting out eaves.

They are entirely surrounded by verandahs, leading to the living quarters, with the storerooms and hiding places behind them. Rosettes, star-shaped figures, stylized plant and animal motifs decorate the cupboards, shelves, walls, ceilings and doors. Winding staircases, chapels, colourful rugs and cushions lend a still greater fascination to the Zheravna house. Do not miss seeing the houses of Sava Philaretov (1851), Hadji Draganov (1851), Haltukov(1818), Todor Ikonomov (first half of the 19th century).