For those of you who have actually never ever heard of Varna, It is the third-largest city in Bulgaria, it’s really known as a port city. The whole coastline on the east side of Bulgaria has some incredible beaches as well, but Varna is kind of the epicentre of that. It’s the place that people come too for rest and relaxation and getting out into nature, so if you come to Bulgaria, you’ll be sure to check out Varna.
Things to See
Found along the city’s coastline is Primorsky Park, which is called the Sea Garden in English, An avenue of Cosmonauts was set up in the 1960s, with the very first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin planting the very first plant, a silver fir tree, on 26th May 1961. This biggest, earliest, best-known public park in Bulgaria includes an aquarium, gambling casino, zoo and unique zoo terrarium, observatory, planetarium, and dolphinarium. Make ‘Primorski park a must-visit of your Varna journey. Other attractions here include a swimming pool, tennis court, open-air theatre, and children’s amusement park. At one end of the park, you can follow the walk-bike path and discover beautiful views of the Black Sea.
The main boulevard has a lot of restaurants and cafes where you can chill and people watch after a long day.
There’s, an auditorium called the Festival and Congress Centre, and this is truly the location of the city where you’ll discover a lot of the primary tourist attractions outside of the Black Sea. The most well-known cathedral in the city is called the Assumption of the Holy Mother Cathedral. The Cathedral facade is made of stones, dragged from the nearby villages. The inner columns are made of solid stone, collected from a region in the northeast from Varna. The stones for the outer columns are supplied from Ruse. The vault arches are made of travertine and the domes are coated in copper tin-plate. The completed cathedral is impressive in size with cross domes. There are three altars in the Cathedral: the Assu of Most Holy Merry is in a central position, the southern is dedicated to St. Nikolay Mirikliiski, and the north altar – to Alexander Nevsky. Frescoes are among the most valuable features of Varna Cathedral. The decoration of the patriarchal throne and iconostases is a real masterpiece of wood-carving. In order to see a beautiful panorama of the city from its bell tower, the visitor should climb the 133 narrow spiral steps.
There’s the Archaeological Museum to go to, this is what a lot of visitors come for to see a collection of gold and precious objects recuperated from the Varna Necropolis, where Thracian tombs date back an incredible 6,500 years. This makes the Gold of Varna the earliest gold treasure in the World. One of the most uncommon museums to go to is a Retro Museum, which covers the socialist period that Bulgaria had from 1945 to 1989. They weren’t part of the USSR, but they did have a communist government in those times
To the southeast of the centre of Varna towards the port is a bath complex that once belonged to the Roman city of Odessus. These baths date back to the year 100. They’re among the largest remains of Roman public baths to survive in Europe and only the second largest of all those outside of Rome. One area of the structure is 82 feet high and you can plainly make out all of the initial facilities. You can even see the residues of the hypocaust, which warmed the baths through a network of underground pipelines.
Just Outside Varna
About an hours walk or 15-minute drive West from the centre of Varna you can discover the Battle of Varna Park Museum. This museum marks the site of one of the pivotal moments in European late-medieval history at Varna in 1444, a Hungarian-Polish Christian Army was beaten by Sultan Murad II’s Ottoman Army. The park is set to the west of Varna and its structures include a long-term exhibit of 15th-century weapons and armour picked up from the aftermath of the battle. Take time to explore the rest of the park, because the city’s mausoleum is here as well as Thracian barrows containing tombs from 4,000BC.
Further on from the Battle of Varna Park Museum is an odd natural phenomenon at what is the only desert in Bulgaria. It’s called the Stone Forest and is a field of stone columns, some 23 feet high covering a location of about 5 square miles.
The Complex Barite is situated around 26 miles northwest of Varna, in the forest of Chernevo. This uncommon tourist attraction assists both tourists and Bulgarians get in touch with Bulgaria’s old methods. It can best be described as an open-air museum that you can stay in. You can see the area’s common crafts and clothing at the ethnographic museum and you can likewise capture performances of traditional dance, music, song rooted in Bulgarian folklore.
I hope you enjoyed this little expedition into Varna and its surrounding location. If you make it to Bulgaria Go Visit.