A different colonial yoke
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The Valley of the Thracian Kings gets its name because several Thracian royal tombs have been unearthed here since 1965. The most famous tomb is located in the town of Kazanluk. We walked through the terraced Tylube park to see mural paintings of the Kazanluk Vault which are considered to be masterpieces of Thracian paintings of the end of the 4 th century.
Among traitors pushed into the Yantra River from the Rock was Patriarch Joachim III in 1300. In the ruins of a vast amphitheater of the Royal quarters from which 22 successive Bulgarian kings ruled, a theater group was rehearsing a play against a backdrop of religious figures hung around the stage.
The Christian population of Arbanassi had been circumspect. The exterior of their early 17 th Century Nativity Church did not have the typical Orthodox dome or the shape of the cross, and its windows were discrete. A brick circle on the ground inside substituted for the dome. The frescoes on the wall had secular elements. There was a twelve-sided zodiac as the circle of life and women in local dresses as pilgrims to the Holy Land. Among inscriptions in Greek, the figure of Eve was oddly identified by Latin letters, Hava.
In my hotel the portrait of Tsar Simeon (893-917), under whom Bulgaria reached the zenith of its power, dominated the wall of its restaurant.
The crooked, narrow streets of Arbanassi featured women vendors of embroidery, one of the two main traditional Bulgarian crafts.
To see the ruins of those buildings, I had crossed the drawbridge that separated Tsarevets Hill from today’s Veliko Tarnovo. I was standing next to a group of students from the local university who were taking an outdoors history exam. The teacher from the school, considered Bulgaria’s most prestigious, looked serious.
The 13 th Century Patriarch’s Complex is the only large area that has been restored in Tsarevets Hill.
I went inside the Church of the Patriarchate where new frescoes in bold black and red colors were painted in the 1980s. These were not religious scenes but depicted Bulgarian history. I climbed the Church’s tower and in the panorama below saw the “Execution Rock” on the edge of a cliff.
I crossed the Danube on the Communist era Friendship Bridge from Romania to Bulgaria. In August, the famously mighty river looked wide and calm. It was another river that looked impressive that day. The Yantra lived up to the meaning of its Thracian name, “quick flowing,” as it continued to carve a deep horseshoe canyon among four tall hills in Veliko Tarnovo.
Remains of the fortifications of the old town of Nessebar including walls of broken rocks joined by mud with gates anchored by two quadrangular towers.
This is due to its 13 and 14 th Century churches and the buildings of the National Revival period. The Christ Pantokrator and St. Paraskeva churches have earned Nessebar the title of “the jewel in the crown of Christian Orthodoxy.”
I took the water taxi from Sunny Beach to Nessebar. As we approached it I could see along the coast line of a small peninsula the remains of the fortifications.
Nessebar’s beauty reminded me of Italy’s Amalfi coast. It is the only Bulgaria town on the list of the Sites of UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage.
These churches are built in the Byzantine “pictorial” style, with ornate facades. Alternating brick and stone layers mixed with green ceramic and turquoise inlays produces an exceptionally attractive exterior. There are blind arches decorated with sun and herringbone designs. Nessebar also boasts some 100 homes from the National Revival era.
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