The Eleshnishki Monastery The Dormition of the Mother of God is part of a group of cloisters around the capital of Bulgaria called Sofia Sveta Gora. It is situated 15km east of Sofia, nestled at the foot of Murgash Peak in the Balkan mountain range. According to local legend, there was an ancient monastery on that same spot, razed to the ground by an earthquake.

Durankulak is Bulgaria's northeasternmost populated place, and the last village before the Romanian border. People have been living here for 90 centuries - from the Neolithic to the present day. In those distant times, several villages lined the banks of Durankulak Lake and the so-called Big Island, the oldest of them dating back to 7000 BC.

Rich in mosaics, the Small Basilica fits perfectly into the complex of ancient landmarks in the city of Plovdiv, named European Capital of Culture 2019. Its ruins were discovered by accident during construction works next to the interior part of the fortification wall that marked the eastern outskirts of the ancient city.

Everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet from Verona. But hardly anyone knows about the Bulgarian tragic couple who, legend has it, lived in the 17th century in the village of Ledenik, situated some 2km west of Veliko Tarnovo on the north bank of the Yantra River.

The city of Pernik, situated in western Bulgaria, is known as “the city of black gold” because the local people, their livelihood, and the very development of this industrial centre, have been closely connected with coal mining ever since 1891 when the Mines and Quarries Act was adopted. It was then that the first colliery called Old Mines started working at the Kulata site. The first mining buildings were constructed around it.

Some nine kilometres northeast of Varna is where the “St. Constantine and St. Helen” Monastery is located in the popular resort of the same name. There are no reliable historical sources indicating as to when the cloister was established. The earliest written records of its history date back to the 19th century and can be found in the book Letters from Bulgaria, by renowned Russian traveller Viktor Teplyakov, published in Moscow in 1832. Legends have it that a monastic brotherhood inhabited the region as early as the 14th century.

In 2019, two emblematic cities - Bulgaria's Plovdiv and Italy's Matera - will become European capitals of culture. Selected several years ago as the Bulgarian candidate for such a capital, Plovdiv is among the few European cities which can boast both long and continuous history.

At the heart of the present-day town of Dobrich, where the Odun Carsi market once stood, lies the Old Dobrich ethnographic museum. The architectural and ethnographic compound is an open-air museum created in the 1980s so that people can immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the past and get close to traditional crafts from the National Revival period (late 18th-19th century) from the northeastern Bulgaria's region of Dobrudzha.

The cloister of Chiprovtsi, dedicated to St. John of Rila, is a significant centre of Bulgarian spiritual life and national enlightenment. The monastery was founded in the 10th century at the foot of the Western Balkan range, close to the town of Chiprovtsi - famous for its beautiful carpets and skilful goldsmiths. During its long history, the monastery has been razed and reconstructed multiple times.

Just 10 kilometres southeast of downtown Sofia, amidst lavish gardens abounding in rare plants, is located the homestead of Vrana - the favourite palace of Bulgarian kings of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom. After decades of oblivion and out of the public's sight, the palace was reopened to visitors after extensive restoration works.