In the north-east of the Balkan chain, facing the Danube plain, Veliko Tarnovo is a picturesque, airy and charming city. It is certainly one of the sites not to be missed during a discovery of Bulgaria. Enclosed in the meanders of the Yantra river, steeped in stairs on its four hills, it aligns houses built on the hillside, squeezed one against the other. Served by cobbled streets and steep staircases, the city also has a modern boulevard, flanked by stores that are rather luxurious for the region. This former medieval capital of Bulgaria, until the fall of the second Bulgarian Empire in 1393, under Ottoman domination since then, was liberated in 1877. In 1879, the first Bulgarian National Assembly, meeting in Tarnovo, decided to transfer the parliament to Sofia, which then became the capital. As for Tarnovo, it takes the name of Veliko Tarnovo (Great Tarnovo) as a tribute to its rich past. From this past, it keeps an economic dynamism and many vestiges presented in about thirty museums or buildings. The major historical sites are explained on panels in Bulgarian, English and German (not in French, no!). The typical mountain houses with their balconies and corbelling give way to larger and more sophisticated mansions built by the merchants who settled in the 19th century. The ancient remains, the religious buildings and the fortress are to be discovered. You can walk from the city center over the suspension bridge and along the paths through the greenery. You can also spend a lot of time contemplating from the terraces or the panoramic windows of the restaurants, bars and some public footbridges, the banks of the river with their suspended houses, the old buildings, the green spaces and the mountain in the distance. Numerous tourist facilities in different categories meet the needs of the largest number of foreign and local visitors.

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Pictures and images Veliko Tarnovo (Велико Търново)

Danse folklorique bulgare. Plamen Tsvetanov - Shutterstock.com
Forteresse et colline de Tsarevets. S.Nicolas - Iconotec
Monastère de Preobrajenie Gospodne. S.Nicolas - Iconotec
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