ANCIENT CITY OF NESSEBAR

Three kilometers south of Sunny Beach lies what is without a doubt the most beautiful city on the coast, or at least the one with the greatest wealth of heritage! Nessebar, the "City of 40 Churches" or "Pearl of the Black Sea", is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and sits on a rocky peninsula in the sea. Nessebar is known as the place in the world with the highest number of churches per capita. Built on a rocky peninsula in the Black Sea, the site of Nessebar was built over three thousand years ago. It was originally a settlement of the Thracians (Menobria). Then, at the beginning of the ^6th century BC, the city became a Greek trading post. The remains that can be seen today date mainly from this Hellenistic period, especially the acropolis, a temple of Apollo, an agora and a Thracian fortification wall. The most sumptuous vestiges evoke as for them the Byzantine period and are articulated around the religious buildings. Among the most remarkable monuments, we can quote the basilica of Stara Mitropolia and the fortress which recall that in the Middle Ages the city on its peninsula was one of the most important Byzantine cities of the west coast of the Black Sea. Today, the charm of the pedestrian streets of Nessebar lies in the succession of wooden houses with overhanging floors. These were built in the ^19th century and are representative of the Black Sea architecture of that time.