Varna is Bulgaria’s third-largest city and a vibrant cultural hub located on the picturesque Black Sea coast. Known as the “Sea Capital of Bulgaria,” Varna offers a delightful blend of history, culture, and natural beauty.
The city is home to the oldest gold treasure in the world, discovered at the Varna Necropolis. This ancient collection dates back to 4,600 BC and is showcased at the Archaeological Museum, alongside numerous other artifacts from the city’s rich past.
The stunning Sea Garden is a national monument of landscaped architecture, perfect for strolls. The city’s beaches, with their golden sands and clear waters, are ideal for relaxation and water sports.
Varna boasts a variety of cultural attractions, including the Aladzha Monastery, a medieval cave monastery, and the Roman Baths, one of the largest preserved Roman thermae in Europe. The city also hosts numerous festivals, such as the Varna Summer International Music Festival.
Accessibility
There are many hotels in Varna to choose from, and Varna Airport is just a short ride from the city center.
A massive park that runs along the seafront and cuts into the city for quite a way too, the Sea Garden is a national monument of landscaped architecture. This is where Varna’s citizens come to relax and have fun at attractions like the dolfinarium and zoo for families, and casino for grown-ups.
The Sea Garden has plenty to see and do. But on a blistering day nothing beats an easy restorative wander along the broad promenades, next to flowerbeds and in the shade of the palms and trees.
As you walk see if you can find the statue of Yuri Gagarin in the Alley of the Cosmonauts. Gagarin himself inaugurated this part of the garden in front of large crowds in 1961.
The earliest traces of human presence in the Varna region date back to the Early Paleolithic Age (about 100,000 BC). In the museum, Middle Paleolithic flint tools illustrate the period, found during plant construction in the valley of river Devnia.
Other flint tools and artifacts represent the Late Paleolithic ages, found during excavations in the locality of Pobitite Kamani.
The so-called Little Cave, near the village of Beloslav, is studied as well and flint tools have been found. Mesolithic age findings have an important place in regional history, especially those found in the locality Pobitite Kamani near the city. This is the only archaeological site dating back to the Middle Paleolithic Age on Bulgarian territory.
Flint
These artifacts are flint microliths – testimony that man was well aware of tool parts, produced of small flint pieces and other materials – wood, bones, and others. Some flint pieces served as arrow tops. During the Chalcolithic Age local populations entered into new stage of development. This was due to mastering the metallurgy of copper and gold, as well as increased contact with neighbors and the use of maritime routes on the seashores. The Chalcolithic Age is studied in Varna territory on several sites.
From the Early Chalcolithic Age date housing layers of inhabited areas near the villages Golyamo Delchevo and Sava. Both are in the museum in the form of tools made of stone, bones, and horns, as well as clay and bone-made anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures, as well as several ceramic utensils with cut-in lines.
Findings from the settlement near Suvorovo illustrate the Middle Chalcolithic Age. Among the ceramics are hollow stands in the form of four angled parallel piped, standing on high legs bowls with bent outside edges and many similar. Most often stamped ornaments decorate the utensils, applied by seals made of mussels with broken angles.
Tombs
A specific place has three tombs excavated in the north shore of the Varna Lake. They contain valuable artifacts about the first social differentiation among the local population. In one of them, there were about 1,000 objects, among which 31 golden pieces of necklace, representing the oldest worked gold pieces on earth up to the present day.
But the most important monument excavated from this age is the world-famous Chalcolithic Necropolis, exhibited in three separate museum exposition halls. It was found by accident during construction works in the western industrial zone in 1972 and soon turned into a sensational scientific discovery with breakthrough importance well over the borders of the prehistory of contemporary Bulgarian territory.
The studies completed until now (excavations are still not completed) have discovered 294 tombs. In 57 tombs there is no human skeleton and only three contain the largest part of gold objects and the best other findings.