Kazanlak Travel Video Guide

Kazanlak Travel Itinerary

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Forty kilometres beyond Kalofer, KAZANLAK is the capital of the rose-growing region, although you wouldn't necessarily realize that unless you pass through town during the first weekend of June, when the long-standing but fairly lacklustre Festival of Roses ( Praznik na Rozata ) takes place. Involving folk music, dancing, and the appointment of a carnival queen, this is basically a tourist event - the rose harvest itself takes place in villages far from town at unsociably early hours of the morning. Nowadays Kazanlak is enjoying a new lease of life as the centre of the Dolinata na Trakiiskite Tsare - the Valley of the Thracian Kings . Once an important area of Thracian settlement, the vicinity of Kazanlak is dotted with countless burial mounds, many of which are still to be excavated. Enough of them have been opened to the public, however, to make the town an essential stopoff for anyone remotely interested in the Bulgarians' ancient antecedents. The most famous of the tombs lies just outside the town centre and contains unique paintings, although only a replica of the tomb is accessible to the public. Further groups of tombs lie in the surrounding

countryside, and can be visited by prior arrangement with the local history museum - so forward planning is essential.

While there's a reasonable selection of accommodation in Kazanlak, the town's location at the centre of both north-south and east-west routes makes it a feasible day-trip destination from Plovdiv, Gabrovo, Veliko Tarnovo, or - at a pinch - Sofia. It also lies at the southern end of the Shipka pass road, one of Bulgaria's most spectacular cross-mountain routes.

Your Tips For Kazanlak

• Rhodopes Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  According to Thracian mythology, the mortal lovers Hem and Rhodopis dared call themselves after the divine Zeus and Hera, who duly punished the couple by turning them into mountains separated by the River Maritsa - him the Balkans and she the Rhodopes . - Bulgaria
  

• Shipka Pass Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  For drama and majestic vistas, few routes in Bulgaria match crossing the SHIPKA PASS . - Bulgaria
  

• Sredna Gora Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  ? So, proudly you may gaze Unto the Sredna Gora, the forest's single queen, And hear the ring of swords, and all this song can mean ? - Pencho Slaveykov, The Song of the Blood The Sredna Gora or "Central Highlands" stretch from the Pancharevo defile outside Sofia almost as far as Yambol on the Thracian plain. - Bulgaria
  

• Southwest Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  The landscape of Bulgaria south of the capital is dominated by the River Struma, which rises on the southern slopes of Mt Vitosha before sweeping west then south through a series of arid gorges and fertile flood plains. - Bulgaria
  

• Balkan Range Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  The Balkan Range cuts right across the country, a forbidding swathe of rock known to the Bulgarians as the Stara planina - the "Old Mountains". - Bulgaria
  

• Plovdiv Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  Lucian the Greek called PLOVDIV "the biggest and most beautiful of all towns" in Thrace; he might have added "and Bulgaria", for the country's second-largest city (with a population of 360,000) is one of its most attractive and vibrant centres, with arguably more to recommend it than Sofia, which the proud locals tend to regard with some disdain. - Bulgaria
  

• Sofia Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  According to its motto, SOFIA "grows but does not age" ( raste no ne staree ): a tribute to the mushrooming suburbs occupied by one-tenth of Bulgaria's population, and a cryptic reference to its ancient origins. - Bulgaria
  

• Kazanlak Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  Forty kilometres beyond Kalofer, KAZANLAK is the capital of the rose-growing region, although you wouldn't necessarily realize that unless you pass through town during the first weekend of June, when the long-standing but fairly lacklustre Festival of Roses ( Praznik na Rozata ) takes place. - Bulgaria
  

• Black Sea Coast Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  The Bulgarian Black Sea coast has quietened down a bit since its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, when it served as the playground for the entire Eastern bloc, but it is still a magnet for hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians and foreign visitors. - Bulgaria
  

• Stara Zagora Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  STARA ZAGORA means "Old Town Behind the Mountain", an apt name for this settlement on the far flanks of the eastern Sredna Gora, with a history of occupation stretching back some 7000 years. - Bulgaria