Veliko Turnovo

This past weekend I took a trip out to Veliko Turnovo. Veliko Turnovo is a town in central Bulgaria with a population of about 65,000. The Yantra River flows through and makes four sharp bends before exiting the city. The consequence of this is that it makes it very confusing to orientate yourself because, regardless of which direction you look, it seems like you are always looking at the river. The city sits on several hills which the river has cut rather deep gorges through on its path through the city. Large parts of the city seem to sit precariously on the edge of the cliffs ready to fall into the river at any time. Luckily there is usually plenty of trash at the bottom to break your fall should the pitted concrete walkways give way. Trash aside, the old part of the town is quite picturesque with narrow cobblestone streets running along the side of the hills. The houses are practically sitting on top of one another because the hillside is so steep.

I arrived around lunch time on Saturday and wandered around for a bit getting a feel for the town. There was a tourist information center, but it wasn’t opened on weekends – which makes sense because weekends are when most of the tourists would probably come. There were also several old houses built during the Ottoman rule and museums you could tour, but again, none of them were open on weekends.

I got lunch and wandered around looking for a place to stay. I eventually decided on a small hotel called the Comfort Hotel which was located towards the top of one of the hills in the old town. The hotel was small – maybe 10 rooms and reminded me of several of the other guest houses I had stayed at over the summer. From my window we could look across the hill to Tsaravets Hill where stood the ruins of a once large fortress from the middle ages. The rest of the town is quaint, but I think the expansive ruins are the main draw to the city. I planned to hit the ruins on Sunday – hopefully they would be open.

After dinner Saturday night I walked around looking for a place to grab a drink. After dark the town is pretty quiet. There were only a couple bars that looked populated so I picked one in the old town with a young crowd and decent music. I had a couple drinks before heading back to the hotel around midnight.

As some background – the history of Veliko Turnovo goes back to the 3rd century BC when Tsaravets Hill was first settled. The hill was fortified by the Romans in the 1st century and in the 5th century the Byzantines built a keep enclosing the small town on the hill. The town and fortification grew and eventually became the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire and the location of the royal palace. The Second Bulgarian Empire lasted from 1185 to 1393 – when the town was taken by the Ottoman Empire after a 3 month siege. They then burned the palace and fortifications to the ground. These are the ruins I could see from my room.

Sunday I walked town to the fortress. Luckily it was open and I was able to tour it for 4 leva (~$2.75) each. There is a long stone walkway to get to the main entrance. Once inside there are quite a lot of ruins of houses, churches, walls, etc. They had signs throughout the ruins noting various significant locations. Unfortunately the signs were in Bulgarian, Russian and German – but no English.

It looked as though several of the old fortifications were being renovated as to how they looked during the 12th century. These renovated parts were interesting because you could walk through them and on top of them to get a great view of the main city and some of the fortified cities ruins.

There was a large church at the top that had been fully restored. Although inside were some crazy modernistic religious paintings which I don’t think were very representative of 12th century art. I tried to get some pictures, but the woman working in the church started hassling me about having to pay to take pictures, something I didn’t want to do.

There were several buildings that looked like they were in various stages of being excavated throughout the complex. Unfortunately several of these areas were littered with water bottles and various other trash which degraded the overall impact of the site. If you looked over the walls you would see piles of bottles and trash as well. The ruins of the town weren’t that big, but there were sections where the brush had completely overgrown some of the old churches. I dug through some of the brush in one location to see a marked sign noting the date and number of the church that was slowly being crumbled by the young trees growing around it.

Bulgaria – you have a fantastic historical sight here and you seem to be doing a good job with renovations, but pick up the trash and trim back the brush! You don’t want your foreign tourists coming in and being turned off by an ancient building which is 1 meter deep in trash.

Overall I spent a couple hours touring the ruins before heading back to the car around mid-afternoon. The weather in Veliko Turnovo was fine (but cloudy) all weekend, but I had heard Sofia got some snow so I wanted to get back before the temperatures dropped back below freezing the roads became slick.

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