PLOVDIV

City Information on a Balkan Jewel

Plovdiv city information is not the easiest to find - it´s almost as this jewel of a city is a well-kept Balkan secret.

When we first visited, the sign showing into the center of town was painted over - and as a result we drove past the city and out into the suburbs. Almost like they don´t want to be found!

This is the second largest city in Bulgaria next to the capital of Sofia, but personally I had never heard about the place until some of my guests mentioned enthusiastically that this was their next stop after Eleftheres.

Paris of the Balkans

A long pedestrian street, the Knyaz Al.Battenberg, stretches straight through the center, with loads of cafees, restaurants, elegant shops and ancient sites.

An for every few meters there is a sculpture, a wall painting or a fountain to admire.

We spent hours here simply people watching.

The architecture of the old town of Plovdiv are the same as we find in the old town of Kavala and Xanthi.

However, the houses were bigger, the streets wider and here you also find lovely gardens, huge trees and loads of flowers. There´s now doubt that Plovdiv at least was, and maybe still is, a rich city.

Many of the old mansions has been turned into museums - we visited the one of Stoyan Chomakov, which now houses a permanent exhibition of artist Zlatyu Boyadzhiev - he´s paintings gave us a great imprssion of how life in Plovdiv must have been 100 years ago. And how the city would look covered in snow!