The Town
The predominantly pedestrianized ul. Makedoniya runs from east to west through the centre of town, cutting through the main square, pl. Balgariya , on the way. It's a wonderfully leafy, cafe-lined boulevard, especially the section to the east of pl. Balgariya which leads towards the town's spa park. Before you reach the park, beside the ruins of an early Byzantine Episcopal Basilica, is the Archeological Museum (Mon-Fri 9am-12.30pm & 2.30-6pm, plus summer Sat & Sun 10am-12.30pm & 4-7.30pm). Built over a late Roman villa with a walk-round display of a mosaic floor found in situ , its upper floor is filled with funerary stoneware from the necropolis of Muletarovo, including a child's sarcophagus with bull- and ram-head reliefs. Votive tablets feature Zeus and Hera or a hunter figure presumed to be Artemis - carved in a vigorous, almost naive style suggesting that Desudava was a predominantly Thracian, rather than a Roman or Hellenic, town. A hundred metres or so beyond the museum, on the other side of the road, lies the ziggurat-shaped Hotel Sandanski , and beyond that a 192-acre park planted with more than 200 exotic species including Japanese ginkos and Californian sequoias. Its large outdoor warm pool (May-Sept daily 9am-8pm), water-slides, boating lake and paths into the hills are all open to the public. The nineteenth-century Church of SS. Bezsrebrenitsi Kozma i Demyan , on the northern edge of the town, by the town cemetery, is the focus of the festivals of Golyama Bogoroditsa (Aug 15) and Malka Bogoroditsa (Sept 16), invoking the Virgin's protection of mothers and children. Even if you're not around then, the church is worth seeing for its fine murals and iconostasis.
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