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Varna, Bulgaria

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Varna (Bulgarian: Варна) is the the largest city on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, and 92nd-largest in the European Union, with a population of 357,281 ([1]). It is the capital of Varna Province and a major seaport. The city occupies an area of 205 square km on hilly verdant terraces descending from the calcareous Frangen Plateau along the horseshoe-shaped Varna Bay of the Black Sea, the elongated Lake Varna and two navigable canals, bridged by the Asparuhov Most. Varna has in excess of 20 km of sand beaches and several hot mineral water springs. The city was named Stalin after the Soviet leader for a brief period from 1949 to 1956.

Varna, commonly referred to as the "sea capital of Bulgaria," is a primary tourist destination and the headquarters of the Bulgarian Navy. The Naval Museum displays the museum ship torpedo boat Drazki. The archaeological museum contains the finds from the Gold of Varna, a cache of chalcolithic grave-goods, which constitute the oldest gold treasure in the world. The museum of ethnography features the life of local urban dwellers, fisherfolk, and peasants in the late 19th and early 20th century.

History

The Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral in Varna
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The Stoyan Bachvarov Dramatic Theatre

Varna was founded as an ancient Greek trading colony (apoikia), Odessos, about 572 BC, on the site of an older Thracian settlement. The name Odessos, first mentioned by Strabo, was apparently pre-Greek, possibly of Carian origin. Historically, the city is perhaps best known for the eneolithic necropolis, the site of the oldest gold treasure in the world, the Gold of Varna. The Roman city, Odessus, had prominent public baths, Thermae, built in the 2nd century AD, which are the largest Roman remains in Bulgaria. The city was a Christian centre, as testified by the ruins of two early basilicas and indications that apostle Ampliatus served as bishop at Odessus.

In the 7th century AD Theophanes the Confessor mentioned the name Varna, as the city came to be known with the Slavic migrations to the Balkans. Asparukh, the founder of the First Bulgarian Empire, advanced to it in 680-681 after routing the Byzantine army of Emperor Constantine IV in the Danube delta. Recent scholarship has suggested that the capital of Bulgaria was initially located in the vicinity of Varna before it was established in Pliska.

Control changed from Byzantine to Bulgarian hands numerous times during the Middle Ages. In the late 9th century, Varna was the site of a principal scriptorium of the Preslav Literary School in a monastery founded by Boris I who perhaps used it as his monastic retreat. In 1201, Kaloyan annexed the city to the Second Bulgarian Empire and by the 14th century, it was a thriving commercial hub frequented by Genovese and Venetian merchant ships and flanked by two fortresses, Kastritsi and Galata, with ports of their own. It was unsuccessfully besieged by Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, in 1366; in 1386, it briefly become capital of the Principality of Karvuna, and was finally taken over by the Ottomans in 1393.

On November 10 1444, the Battle of Varna was fought nearby, with the Turks defeating an army of 30,000 Crusaders led by Ladislaus III of Poland, which had assembled at the port to set sail to Constantinople. The army was attacked by a superior force of 120,000 Ottomans, led by sultan Murad II. Ladislaus III was killed in a bold attempt to capture the sultan, earning the nickname Warneńczyk. The subsequent retreat of the crusader army made the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 all but inevitable. Today, there is a cenotaph of Ladislaus III in Varna.

In 1829, the city was taken over by the Russians following the prolonged Siege of Varna but returned to the Ottomans after its medieval fortress was razed. The British and French campaigning against Russia in the Crimean War used Varna as their headquarters and principal base. In 1866, the first railroad in Bulgarian lands connected the city with the port of Rousse on the Danube, linking the Ottoman capital Istanbul with Central Europe. The port of Varna developed as a major supplier of food—notably wheat from the adjacent breadbasket region of Dobruja—to Istanbul.

In 1878, the city, which numbered 26 thousand inhabitants, was ceded to Bulgaria by the Treaty of Berlin and Russian troops entered it on 27 July. With the departure of most ethnic Turks and Greeks and the arrival of Bulgarians from inland, North Dobruja, Bessarabia, and Asia Minor, and later, of refugees from Macedonia, Eastern Thrace and South Dobruja following the Balkan Wars and the First World War, ethnic diversity gave way to Bulgarian predominance, although sizeable minorities of Gagauz, Armenians, and Sephardic Jews remained for decades.

The city established itself as Bulgaria's principal port of export, significant industrial and viticulture centre, seat of the nation's oldest institution of higher learning outside Sofia, a popular spot for iternational festivals and events, as well as the country's summer capital since the erection of the Euxinograd royal summer palace. Mass tourism emerged in the 1960s.

In 1962, the 15th Chess Olympiad, also known as the World Team Championship, was here. In 1969 and 1987, Varna was the host of the World Rhythmic gymnastics Championships. From September 30 to October 4 1973, the 10th Olympic Congress took place in the Sports Palace in Varna.

Economy

One of Varna's beaches

Varna is an important economic centre for Bulgaria and the Black Sea region. The economy is service-based with 61% of net revenue generated in trade and tourism, 16% in manufacturing, 14% in transportation and communications, and 6% in construction. Major industries include trade and transportation (see Port of Varna, Varna International Airport), shipbuilding (now declining), and manufacturing. Together with the nearby towns of Beloslav and Devnya, Varna forms what is known as the Varna-Devnya Industrial Complex, home to some of the largest chemical, cement, power generating and manufacturing plants in Bulgaria, including the sites of the two largest privatization deals in the nation's history. Tourism is of foremost economic importance, with the nearby resorts of Golden Sands, Holiday Club Riviera, Sunny Day, Constantine and Helena, and others with a total capacity of well over 50,000 beds (2004), attracting millions of international visitors each year. The resorts received considerable internal and foreign investment in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and are environmentally sound, being located reassuringly far from chemical and other smokestack industries. Varna is also Bulgaria's only international cruise destination and a major international convention and spa centre. Real estate is booming, with some of the highest prices in the nation, often surpassing Sofia. Commercial real estate is developing international office tower projects such as the Business Park Varna. In retail, Varna not only has the assortment of international big-box retailers and shopping malls now ubiquitous for larger Bulgarian cities, but boasts two made-in-Varna national chains with locations spreading over the coutry, retailer Piccadilly and restaurateur Happy.

In September 2004, FDI Magazine (a Financial Times Business Ltd publication) proclaimed Varna "South-eastern Europe City of the Future", citing its strategic location, fast-growing economy, rich cultural heritage and higher education.

Sights

The Varna Archaeological Museum exhibits the oldest gold treasure in the world
The Varna Railway Station
Remains of Ancient Roman Odessus

Some of the famous landmarks of Varna include the Varna Dolphinarium (opened August 11 1984), the Sea Garden, the waterfront promenade strip with a string of beach clubs offering a vibrant (albeit noisy) scene of rock, hip-hop, American-style pop, techno, and chalga, the city beaches themselves, also known as sea baths (морски бани), dotted with hot sulphuric mineral springs, the Roman Baths, the Nicolaus Copernicus Observatory and Planetarium, the Euxinograd palace, park and winery, the Botanical Garden (Ecopark Varna), and the Pobiti Kamani (rock columns) rock phenomenon. The cave monastery Aladzha is also a popular tourist site. Additionally, the 2.4 km long, 50 m high Asparuhov most bridge is a popular spot for bungee jumping.

Churches

Notable old Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox temples include the Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral, the 16-th century Theotokos Panagia, the St. Athanasius, the St. Paraskeve chapel, the seamen's church of St. Nicholas, the Archangel Michael, also the site of the first Bulgarian secular school during the national revival, and the Sts. Constantine and Helena, part of the 16th-century monastery of the same name. There is an old Armenian church, two Roman Catholic temples (only one is open), a thriving Evangelical Methodist Episcopal church offering organ concerts, active Evangelical Pentecostal, Seventh-Day Adventist, and two Baptist churches. Two mosques have survived since Ottoman times, when there were 18 of them in town, as have two now dilapidated sinagogues, Sephardic and Ashkenazic.

Architecture

In 1878, Varna was an Ottoman medieval city of mostly wooden houses densely packed along narrow, winding alleys dominated by minarets. It was surrounded by a stone wall with a citadel, a moat, ornamented iron gates protected by towers, and a vaulted stone bridge across the Varna river. The place abounded in pre-Ottoman relics.

Today, very little of this remains; the downtown was rebuilt in late 19th and early 20th century in Western style with local interpretations of Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque, Neo-Classicism, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Stone masonry from demolished city walls was used for the the Byzantine cathedral, high schools and other public buildings and for paving new boulevards. War refugees in the 1910s-1920s settled in poorer neighborhoods along the city edges.

With the 1960s to the 1980s urbanization, large Soviet-style apartment complexes sprawled onto land formerly covered by small private vineyards or agricultural cooperatives as the city population tripled. Beach resorts emerged, mostly in a sleek modern style, somewhat lost in their recent lavish renovations, along with modern landmarks such as the Palace of Culture and Sports (1968).

With the emergence of a new moneyed class in the 1990s, upscale apartment buildings mushroomed both downtown and on uptown terraces overlooking the sea. Varna's vineyards, dating back perhaps to antiquity and stretching for miles around, started turning from mostly rural grounds dotted with with small vili (вили, summer houses or dachas) into affluent suburbs sporting oppulent villas and private retreats, epitomized by the researched post-modernist kitsch of the Villa Aqua.

With the new construction outpacing infrastructure, landslides were activated, temporarily disrupting major highways. At the same time, a stretch of shanty town, more befitting Rio de Janeiro, remains in a Roma neghborhood on the western edge of town due to complexities of local politics. The beach resorts were expanded, fortunately without being as heavily overbuilt as were other tourist destinations on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.

Education

Higher learning institutions

The University of Economics, founded in 1920 as the Higher Business School, is the second oldest Bulgarian university and the oldest one outside Sofia, underwritten by the Varna Chamber of Commerce and Industry, with Prof. Tsani Kalyandjiev as its first President. The Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy is successor to the nation's oldest technical school, the Machine School for the Navy, established in 1881 and renamed His Majesty's Naval Academy in 1942. Other higher schools include the Medical University, the Technical University, and the Chernorizets Hrabar Varna Free University, a couple of two-year colleges, and five research institutions totaling some 2,500 faculty and researchers and 30,000 students.

Memorial of the Battle of Varna of 1444 carved into an ancient Thracian tomb-hill
Ottoman period house in downtown Varna
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Golden Sands beachfront resort outside Varna
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Grand Hotel International, Golden Sands

Culture

Museums

Galleries

  • Boris Georgiev Art Gallery
  • Georgi Velchev Gallery
  • Modern Art Centre

Performing arts

Other institutions

International art festivals

National festival

  • Golden Rose Bulgarian Feature Film Festival (annual)

Media

Newspapers

Magazines

Radio stations

TV stations

Web portals

Sports

Soccer is the biggest spectator sport with two rival clubs in the nation's professional league, PFC Cherno More ("the Sailors"), founded in 1913 and first national champion (1925), and PFC Spartak Varna ("the Falcons"), founded in 1918. Men's basketball, women's volleyball, boxing, and sailing are also vibrant. Varna hosts international competitions, including world championships, in several sports. Currently (2007), three 18-hole golf courses of professional quality are being developed north of the city in the vicinity of Balchik and Kavarna.

Twin cities

Varna's twin cities are:

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Varna.

43°13′N 27°55′E / 43.217°N 27.917°E / 43.217; 27.917

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