Bulgaria's 'Little Vienna' — Belle Époque facades on the Danube, and the deepest cave church in Europe
Ruse (historically Roussé) is Bulgaria's most architecturally distinguished city after Sofia — a Danube port town whose late 19th-century Viennese and French Neo-Baroque city centre feels oddly grand for a provincial Bulgarian town, a legacy of the brief period when it was the terminus of the first railway on the Balkans (Ruse–Varna, 1866) and the most prosperous city in Bulgaria. The Danube here is wide and blue-green, with the Romanian city of Giurgiu visible on the opposite bank. Nearby, the Rock-Hewn Churches of Ivanovo are carved directly into a limestone canyon above the Rusenski Lom ri…
The Roman city of Sexaginta Prista (60 ships) guarded this Danube crossing from the 1st century AD; the location remained strategically critical through Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Ottoman rule. Under the Ottomans it was called Rusçuk and was one of the empire's largest Danube ports. The Bulgarian National Revival and the post-liberation period (after 1878) brought an influx of Austrian, Italian, and German architects who built the Neo-Baroque ensemble still visible in the city centre. The violinist and composer Dora Stratou and opera singer Ghena Dimitrova were both born here; the city has a d…