Plovdiv

Plovdiv is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe. Pottery found on Nebet Tepe shows a settlement there by the end of the 4th millennium BC, which grew by the 12th century BC into the Thracian city of Eumolpias, later called Pulpudeva. In 342 BC Philip II of Macedon refounded it as Philippopolis, settling Thracians and 2,000 Macedonians there. Under Rome it was Trimontium, 'the three hills', capital of the province of Thracia, with a theatre for 7,000, a stadium modelled on Delphi's, a forum and baths. The Goths under Cniva sacked it in 250, but its walls were rebuilt and new basilicas went up in the 4th century.

The Bulgars took the city in the 9th century, and Byzantines and Bulgarians fought over it for centuries; in 969 Sviatoslav of Kiev sacked it. Geoffrey of Villehardouin described it as the third city of the Byzantine Empire, and after 1204 it was the capital of a Crusader duchy. The Ottomans conquered it in 1363 or 1364, and as Filibe it was the capital of Rumelia until Sofia replaced it in 1443, then a provincial centre and a rich trading city.

The Russians took it in January 1878, and the Congress of Berlin made it the capital of autonomous Eastern Rumelia. In 1885, after a campaign organised from the city by Zahari Stoyanov, Eastern Rumelia joined Bulgaria. The first Bulgarian fair was held here in 1892, and in the 20th century food processing, tobacco, brewing and textiles made Plovdiv an industrial city. The Old Town was restored and its Roman remains excavated in the 1970s and 1980s, and in 2019 Plovdiv was a European Capital of Culture, together with Matera.

Plovdiv is one of Bulgaria's main cultural and literary centres. Its Drama Theatre is the successor of the first professional theatre company in Bulgaria, founded in 1881; the Puppet Theatre, founded in 1948, is among the leading in its field; and the Trakiya Folklore Ensemble, founded in 1974, has toured more than 42 countries, while the Trakiya Traditional Choir has been nominated for a Grammy. The Roman theatre stages opera and concerts in summer, and the year's festivals include the theatre festival 'A Stage on a Crossroad', Night/Plovdiv in September and Kapana Fest.

The city has long been religiously mixed. Orthodox churches of the 19th century stand in the Old Town, the nine-domed Dzhumaya Mosque stands in the centre, the Sephardic synagogue survives from a once large Jewish quarter, and Catholic and Protestant churches serve smaller communities. In 1885 Bulgarians were half the population, beside Turks, Greeks, Jews and Armenians.

Football divides the city: Botev Plovdiv, founded in 1912, and Lokomotiv, founded in 1926, contest the Plovdiv derby, considered the second fiercest rivalry in Bulgarian football after Sofia's Eternal derby. The pedestrian main street, which runs for 1.8 km through the centre over the track of the Roman stadium, is the city's main shopping area, lined with shops, cafés and restaurants.

About 329,000 people lived in Plovdiv in 2024, and some 540,000 in the wider metropolitan area, which makes it Bulgaria's second city and its most densely populated. It is also the economic centre of the south: industry has expanded since the late 1990s, much of it in factories on the outskirts and in the Trakia Economic Zone, one of the largest industrial zones in Eastern Europe, alongside a fast-growing IT and outsourcing sector and rising tourism. The International Fair, held every year since 1892, draws hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Six universities, among them Plovdiv University and the Medical University, bring a large student population. Many live in blocks of flats: Trakiya, in the south-east, is the city's largest neighbourhood and one of the largest areas of blocks of flats in Bulgaria. Stolipinovo is the largest Roma neighbourhood in the Balkans, with around 20,000 people.

The car is common, with some 658 per 1,000 inhabitants, but the city also has an extensive network of cycle routes. Daily life centres on the pedestrian main street and the café terraces of Kapana, and on the park and rowing canal in the west, popular for jogging and walking.

Plovdiv sits in a fertile part of the Upper Thracian Plain, and its food follows the produce. Summer tables are heavy with tomatoes, peppers and fruit: salads, roasted peppers and lyutenitsa, a relish of peppers and tomatoes. Shopska salad, diced tomato, cucumber and pepper under grated white sirene cheese, is often eaten as an appetiser with a glass of rakia, before grilled kebapche and kyufte, stuffed peppers or banitsa, the layered filo pastry with cheese and egg.

Wine is the region's pride. Mavrud, a late-ripening red grape that gives tannic, spicy wine, is grown mainly around Asenovgrad and Perushtitsa. From the mountains to the south come Rhodope dishes such as patatnik, grated potato and onion cooked slowly with mild mint, and the prized beans of the village of Smilyan.

The cafés, bars and small restaurants of Kapana make it the city's busiest place to eat and drink, the main street is lined with cafés, and the restaurants of the Old Town, at the top of the hill, are the city's priciest.