Plovdiv

Bulgaria’s second-largest city, Plovdiv (Пловдив), has more apparent charms than Sofia, which locals tend to look down on. The old town embodies Plovdiv’s long history – Thracian fortifications subsumed by Macedonian masonry overlaid with Roman and Byzantine walls.

Great timber-framed mansions, erected during the Bulgarian Renaissance, symbolically look down upon the lower town’s derelict Ottoman mosques and artisans’ dwellings. But this isn’t just another museum town: the city’s arts festivals and trade fairs are the biggest in the country, and its restaurants and bars equal those of the capital. The City Gallery of Fine Arts holds an extensive collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bulgarian paintings, including some fine portraits by renowned National Revival realist painter Stanislav Dospevski. Further along, the Church of SS Constantine and Elena contains a fine gilt iconostasis decorated by the prolific nineteenth-century artist Zahari Zograf, whose work also appears in the adjacent Museum of Icons. The richly decorated Kuyumdzhioglu House is a bit further uphill, now home to the Ethnographic Museum. Folk costumes and crafts are on display on the ground floor, while upstairs, the elegantly furnished rooms reflect the former owner’s taste for Viennese and French Baroque.