Bulgaria's sea capital — ancient gold, the Black Sea promenade, and meze culture
Varna is Bulgaria's largest Black Sea city and summer capital — a port with 2,600 years of continuous settlement that holds the world's oldest processed gold jewellery in its Archaeological Museum (the Varna Necropolis gold, dated to 4,600–4,200 BCE). The city centre around Knyaz Boris I Boulevard is a pleasing mix of Habsburg-era architecture, Orthodox churches, and a Roman thermae complex in the middle of a pedestrian zone. Varna's food culture is the most internationally influenced in Bulgaria: Black Sea seafood (Black Sea sprat, medjid, turbot), tarator (cold cucumber-yoghurt soup with wa…
Founded as the Greek colony of Odessos around 600 BCE by settlers from Miletus, Varna grew into a significant Thracian and Greek trading city on the western Black Sea coast. It was incorporated into the Roman Empire in 15 CE, then into the Byzantine Empire, and finally into the First Bulgarian Empire in 680 CE. The city gained its current name from a Slavic tribe around the 7th century. The Battle of Varna (1444) was one of the last great medieval Crusades, in which a Christian coalition was defeated by the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, effectively ending European military resistance to Ottoman ex…