Old Town of Plovdiv

The old town of Plovdiv occupies the three hills at the centre of the modern city, its cobblestone streets and colourful painted houses forming a coherent urban landscape that is the most complete and the most celebrated example of National Revival architecture in Bulgaria, a style that reached its peak in the 19th century as Bulgarian urban culture reasserted itself under Ottoman rule.

The approximately 200 surviving Revival-era houses are the neighbourhood's greatest asset, each one a small masterpiece of decorative intent in which carved wooden beams, exposed stone foundations, second-floor oriels jutting boldly over the street, and facade paintings in warm ochre, rose, and terracotta tones combine to create a streetscape of extraordinary richness and variety.

The Roman theatre of Plovdiv, carved into the hillside during the reign of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the 2nd century CE, is one of the best-preserved ancient theatres in the world and still seats 3,500 people in its original stonecave, its acoustics so perfect that it hosts theatrical and musical performances during the annual Plovdiv International Fair each autumn.

Below the theatre, the ancient stadium built in the 2nd century during the same period of Roman prosperity lies buried beneath the modern city centre, though sections of the excavated seating and track surface can be viewed through glass panels in the main pedestrian street, the contrast between the ancient and the modern made vivid and physical by the simple act of walking over the buried structure.

The main streets of the old town — Knyaz Aleksandar I, Tsar Ivan Asen II, and the upper part of what is now a third street — form the most coherent and most pleasant circuit for the visitor, the facades at their most beautiful in the late afternoon when the low sun turns the ochre and rose surfaces almost golden and the carved wooden oriels cast long geometric shadows across the stone paving.

The neighbourhood has been sensitively restored over the past thirty years, many of the old houses now serving as museums, galleries, craft shops, and boutique hotels, the commercial activity giving the quarter a living quality that distinguishes it from the museumified historic quarters of some other European cities, the houses still occupied and the streets still serving the daily life of the city.

The cumulative effect of the old town's intact scale, colour, and material honesty is to make a visitor feel, in the late hours of a summer evening when the day-trippers have gone and the street lights come on, that they have stepped into a complete and living artefact of 19th-century Bulgarian urban life, an experience that no other city in Bulgaria can quite replicate.

It is the most complete and the most architecturally distinguished example of National Revival urban architecture in the Balkans.

The Roman theatre is one of the finest surviving ancient theatres in the world and remains in active use, giving the site a continuous performative life spanning nearly two thousand years.

The intimacy of the old town's scale, combined with the richness of its decorative detail, creates an experience that rewards slow wandering far more than rushed sightseeing.