Veliko Tarnovo & the North

Rome guarded this frontier along the Danube with fortress towns such as Novae near Svishtov and Durostorum, today's Silistra, and built Nikopolis ad Istrum north of Veliko Tarnovo. After the Bulgars crossed the river in the 7th century, their khans made Pliska, in today's Shumen province, the capital of the First Bulgarian Empire from 681; the Madara Rider was carved nearby in the early 8th century. In 893 the capital moved to Veliki Preslav, where the Preslav Literary School developed the literature of the new Slavonic script.

In 1185 the brothers Asen and Peter led a revolt at Tarnovo that founded the Second Bulgarian Empire, and Tarnovo, on the hills above the Yantra, became its capital, a city of churches, monasteries and royal palaces on Tsarevets. The Ottomans took it in 1393, and in 1396 a crusader army was defeated at Nicopolis, today's Nikopol on the Danube.

Under Ottoman rule the plains of the northeast were settled by Turks, while the foothill towns of Gabrovo, Tryavna and Elena grew rich on crafts and trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ruse became a Danube port and the terminus of the first railway in Bulgaria, to Varna, opened in 1866. In the Russo-Turkish war, Pleven was besieged for months before falling in December 1877. The first constitution was adopted in Tarnovo in 1879, and Bulgarian independence was proclaimed there in 1908.

The north carries the memory of both medieval empires, and Veliko Tarnovo is treated as a symbolic second capital, with state ceremonies and a proud local identity. The foothill towns were centres of the National Revival: Tryavna had its own schools of woodcarving and icon painting, and the master builder Kolyu Ficheto designed bridges and churches across the region. Gabrovo is famous across Bulgaria for jokes about its supposedly thrifty citizens, and it has built a whole museum, the House of Humour and Satire, and a carnival around them.

The northeast — Razgrad, Targovishte, Shumen and parts of Silistra — has large Turkish communities, many of them in the Ludogorie hills, and the Demir Baba Tekke near Sveshtari is a shrine of the Alevi tradition. Villages of the plain keep carnival customs, and the harvest and name-day feasts of the Orthodox calendar.

Ruse has a more Central European feel, with a history of Jewish, Armenian and foreign merchant families; the writer Elias Canetti was born there in 1905.

Ruse, with over 120,000 people, is the largest city of the region, a Danube port and industrial centre facing Giurgiu in Romania. Pleven has about 90,000 people and a large medical university; Veliko Tarnovo, with around 60,000, is a university town whose students keep its old centre lively; Shumen, Gabrovo and Lovech are smaller regional centres, and Razgrad, Targovishte and Silistra are market towns of the plain.

The Danube plain is a major grain-growing region, and the northeast grows sunflowers and wheat. Industry includes machine-building in Gabrovo, the river port in Ruse, and pharmaceuticals in Razgrad, but many factory towns have shrunk since 1989. Depopulation is severe in villages across the north, and many houses in the foothills now belong to weekend residents or foreign buyers.

Days follow the familiar pattern: an early start, a sit-down lunch, and evenings on the main pedestrian street or the Danube embankment in Ruse.

The Danube gives the north its fish: carp, catfish and zander are fried or cooked in ribena chorba, a spicy fish soup, in Ruse, Svishtov and Nikopol. The plain produces bread wheat, and the northeast its sunflower oil.

The foothills have their own specialities. Elenski but, a dry-cured leg of pork from the Elena area, is sliced thin as a meze, and Troyan is famous for its plum rakia, Troyanska slivova, and for its glazed pottery, in which much of the regional cooking is served. Gyuvech and kavarma, meat and vegetable stews baked in clay pots, are common in the mehanas of Veliko Tarnovo.

Wine is made across the Danube plain, where Gamza, a local red grape, is the traditional variety. Shumen has a well-known brewery, and the Turkish communities of the northeast add dishes such as börek pastries and sweets like baklava. The gardeners of Lyaskovets, near Veliko Tarnovo, were famous for spreading Bulgarian market gardening abroad in the 19th century.

Veliko Tarnovo's sights run along the Yantra: the walls and gate of Tsarevets with the Patriarchal Cathedral on top, the craft street of Samovodska Charshiya, the Varosha houses above the river and the monument to the Asen dynasty on its bend. Arbanasi, on the plateau above, has the frescoed Church of the Nativity and fortified merchant houses. To the south, Dryanovo Monastery lies in a wooded gorge, Tryavna keeps its woodcarving museum, and near Gabrovo stand Etar, an open-air museum of working water-powered crafts, and the craft village of Bozhentsi, with stone roofs and cobbled lanes.

West of Tarnovo, Pleven has a panorama museum of the 1877 siege, and Lovech a covered bridge over the Osam, with Troyan Monastery in the mountains to the south and the Devetashka Cave and Krushuna waterfalls to the north.

On the Danube, Ruse's ornate centre and the Danube Bridge to Giurgiu are a short drive from the rock-hewn churches of Ivanovo in the Rusenski Lom valley. Further east, Srebarna Lake near Silistra is a UNESCO-listed wetland known for its pelicans, and the Thracian tomb of Sveshtari near Razgrad is also listed by UNESCO. Around Shumen are the Madara Rider, the ruins of Pliska and Veliki Preslav, the Tombul Mosque, and the hilltop monument to 1,300 years of Bulgaria.