The Town
The heart of town is the elegant Pazarska or City Garden , near the intersection of the main east-west and north-south thoroughfares, bul. Tsar Simeon Veliki and bul. Ruski. Pensioners gather on the benches to gossip and couples stroll along the shady paths between the flowerbeds, while a row of booksellers runs off towards the Eski Dzhamiya (Old Mosque). Built in 1409, this squat edifice has a seventeen-metre-wide dome that was considered a great architectural feat at the time. Sadly, the building is now derelict and no longer open to visitors. Diagonally across the Pazarska loom the old and new Opera Houses , home to the oldest and most prestigious provincial opera company in Bulgaria - it was here that the famous singer Boris Christoff first made his name. Across the way to the west, a sizeable restored section of a Roman theatre is visible behind the town council building. To the north of here, on ul. Dimitar Naumov, you can get a good idea of bourgeois life during the National Revival, at the Museum of Nineteenth-Century Town Life , housed in a distinctive sepia- and blue-painted mansion (open by appointment; tel 042/23931). Back on bul. Tsar Simeon Veliki, opposite the mosque, the Art Gallery (Tues-Sat 9am-noon & 2-5pm; US$1) displays work by local artists, and is worth a quick look on your way to the Geo Milev House-Museum (Mon-Fri 8.30am-noon & 1-4.30pm; US$1), the home of the poet whose verses on the subject of the 1923 Uprising caused his untimely death. The museum contains several rooms re-creating his abode, a section on other local poets such as Ivan Hadzhihristov, and a nice cafe.
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