Varna, the third largest Bulgarian city, is often styled as 'the seaside capital' of the country and is famous throughout the world for its wonderful beaches and thermal water springs. Less known, however, is the fact that the city has been built over the vestiges of an ancient Greek colony, which grew in an earlier Thracian place.

The Vladayski Monastery is situated at the southeastern foot of Mount Lyulin, some 25 kilometres away from the capital Sofia. The existing buildings of the cloister are relatively new, but it is believed that the monastery was founded back in the 10th century, or during the Second Bulgarian Empire at the latest - a time when more than 100 monasteries were built in the Sofia area. Since then, it has been destroyed and rebuilt many times.

Just 50 kilometres south of Sofia and near the village of Belchin is located a fortress that was consigned to oblivion until a couple of years ago. The locals call the St Spas hill, which overlooks the village, Tsari Mali Grad, or the Small Tsarigrad (Tsarigrad means “city of kings” and is how Bulgarians used to call Constantinople - editor's note), as according to local legend there used to be a large settlement on that spot.

The St John the Theologian Monastery of Zemen is situated amid a scenic locality at the foot of the Koniavska Mountain, in the gorge of Zemen on the Struma River and merely 70 kilometres south of Sofia. The monastery is among the earliest surviving sites of Bulgarian medieval architecture, construction building and wall painting.

In the centre of Sofia there is an imposing and very popular church, but few people know that before it became a Christian temple it had been a mosque for centuries. The name of the church is Sveti Sedmochislenitsi and it is dedicated to Saints Cyril and Methodius, the two brothers who devised the precursor of the Cyrillic alphabet, and their five disciples - Clement, Naum, Angelar, Gorazd and Sava.

Within the city of Stara Zagora's boundaries there is a unique in situ museum which demonstrates how the ancient inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula lived during the Neolithic Age, some 8,000 years ago. The museum complex is called “Neolithic dwellings” and comprises the remains of two houses preserved in situ, arranged as an exhibit along with artefacts discovered in and around them

Only four kilometres to the east of Svishtov and 80 kilometres to the north of Veliko Tarnovo, on the bank of the River Danube lie the remnants of an old Roman fortified military camp which subsequently developed into a city. Known as Novae, it was established in 69 AD by decree of Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasian, but as early as 48 AD, the 8th Legio Augusta encamped at this place to safeguard the Danube border of the empire from the Barbarians.

The ethnographic complex Samovodska Charshiya is one of the most remarkable tourist attractions in Bulgaria's old capital city of Veliko Tarnovo. It came into being in the second half of the 19th century, when the city began expanding. Every market day early in the morning farmers from the nearby village of Samovodene would come to the Charshiya (from a Turkish word for “market”) and would lay out vegetables and fruit right on the ground in the hope to sell their produce. That was how the name Samovodska Charshiya emerged.

One of Bulgaria's most interesting cities on the River Danube is Svishtov, located at the southernmost point of the river, on a steep bank. The city became an important centre already in the times of the Roman Empire when it played a key role in stopping Barbarian invasions on the Balkans.

The Strupets Monastery of Saint Prophet Iliya is located about 100 kilometres to the northeast of Sofia near the village of the same name and belongs to the Vratsa diocese. Its other name is Tarzhishte (Marketplace) Monastery because there was a big marketplace near it which emerged as early as the Middle Ages.