Burgas

Thracians lived around the bay — their sanctuary at Beglik Tash on the south coast is one trace of them — and in AD 70 the emperor Vespasian founded Deultum near today's city as a colony for Roman veterans, the second most important city of its province. In the Middle Ages the area had fortresses and the hot baths of Aquae Calidae, used by Byzantine, Bulgarian and Ottoman rulers, and a small fortress called Pyrgos, Greek for "tower", is thought to have given Burgas its name. Its growth was slow, overshadowed by the older trading towns of Nesebar and Sozopol.

Under the Ottomans it was a small town of about 3,000 people, which later revived on crafts and the export of grain; in the 17th and 18th centuries it was an important cereal port with its own grain measure, the Burgas kile, and by 1865 it was the second port of the Ottoman Black Sea after Trabzon. After 1878 it became an economic and industrial centre. The city library was founded in 1888, the Sea Garden laid out in 1891, and the cathedral begun in 1897; the railway to Plovdiv opened in 1890 and the deep-water port in 1903, and factories followed — mills, a sugar refinery and, from 1924, the first pencil factory in south-eastern Europe. By 1934 the city had about 34,000 people.

After 1945 the communist government nationalised more than 160 businesses, and repression followed; emigration convoys allowed some 12,000 people, among them the city's Jews, to emigrate. In July 2012 a suicide bomber attacked a bus carrying Israeli tourists at the airport. Today the port and refinery remain central to the city's economy.

Burgas has built its reputation on festivals. The Flora flower exhibition has been held every spring since 1985, sand sculptors from many countries gather each summer, and the International Folklore Festival, started in 1965 for Balkan dance and music, has since brought more than 18,000 dancers from around the world. Burgas will host the Eurovision Song Contest 2027, the first held in Bulgaria. The city also hosts a sailing week, a theatre festival, a season of opera and classical music, and an annual pop music festival, Burgas and the Sea.

The Sea Garden is the centre of civic life — a national monument of landscape architecture, full of sculptures, where people walk, meet and watch the sea. The lakes around the city give it a second identity: they lie on the Via Pontica, the second-largest bird migration route in Europe, and draw birdwatchers from all over the world to see pelicans, pygmy cormorants and red-breasted geese.

The city's past as a trading port left a mixed heritage, including the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross of 1853, one of its oldest churches. On 6 December Burgas honours its patron saint, St Nicholas, protector of sailors and fishermen. Galleries are numerous, and the university and the Burgas Free University give the city a student population of more than 6,000.

The official estimate put the population at about 189,000 at the end of 2025, while about 210,000 people are registered as living in Burgas, making it the fourth-largest city in Bulgaria and the second on the coast after Varna. Most live in the large housing districts to the north and west, such as Izgrev and Zornitsa, built in the communist era, while seaside Sarafovo has become an expensive neighbourhood. The industrial districts of Akatsiite and Pobeda lie south of the centre on the strip between Lake Burgas and the sea.

The economy rests on industry and transport. The Neftochim refinery is the largest oil refinery in south-eastern Europe and the city's largest industrial enterprise, the Port of Burgas is the second-largest in Bulgaria, and the airport is the country's second most important. In 2023 Bulgaria took back the concession it had granted to Lukoil to run the Rosenets oil terminal. Tourism adds a summer economy, as the city serves as the gateway to Sunny Beach, Nesebar, Sozopol and the southern resorts.

Life follows the familiar Bulgarian rhythm of coffee, work and family meals, with evenings spent along the pedestrian streets and in the Sea Garden. In summer the beach fills by day and the bars below the park by night, and many people fish on Lake Burgas.

Burgas eats from the sea and the lakes. Black Sea fish and mussels feature on menus across the city, grilled fish, both saltwater and freshwater, is a staple, and fisherman's soup, ribena chorba, is spiced with thyme and fresh lovage. Carp fishing is popular on Lake Burgas, and on St Nicholas's Day, 6 December, the traditional meal is fish, usually carp. Mussels in butter with onion and fresh herbs are a dish traditionally associated with nearby Sozopol.

Everyday food is the national cuisine. Tarator, a cold soup of cucumbers, garlic, yogurt and dill, is the summer starter; shopska salad, with cucumbers, onions, peppers and tomatoes and white cheese, is a common salad; and the grill supplies kebapche, cumin-seasoned minced meat shaped into a stick. Breakfast is banitsa, filo pastry filled with egg and sirene cheese, or mekitsi, deep-fried dough with jam, honey or cheese.

National lagers such as Zagorka and Kamenitza are widely sold, and rakia is the everyday spirit. Sea salt from the pans of Lake Atanasovsko, produced there since 1906, is a local product.